


A Lion by the Tail

by LadyRhiyana



Series: Etchings [8]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Cat and Mouse Games, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:34:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 26,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: The Maid of Tarth takes the Kingslayer prisoner in the Whispering Wood.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Etchings [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140638
Comments: 1138
Kudos: 1017





	1. The Whispering wood

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is all about prisoners and chains and intense heated exchanges (of words, gazes and other things) between enemies. If that sounds like your cup of tea, please come in! 
> 
> It shouldn't run to too many chapters. However, as with all my chaptered fics this is a work in progress and I make no promises as to updates.

She’s 17 years old, in her first battle, and she sees the bright figure of the Kingslayer beneath the crimson Lannister banner and just – goes straight for him. He fights like a demon, like a golden god, and she has only a moment to realise her own folly before she’s desperately trying to fend off his sword. Desperate, panicked, she throws herself from the saddle and crashes into him, knocking him to the ground, and they wrestle for supremacy in the churned up mud until she finally forces him to yield. 

**

There’s a great feast, afterwards. The Northerners pound the table and hail her in great roaring voices, and she drinks a great deal of unwatered wine – so much so that she’s slow to react when the bellowing and bluster turns violent, when Lord Karstark swears drunken vengeance and heads for the prisoners, a cheering crowd behind him.

It’s all Brienne can do to intercept them before he reaches the prisoners’ stockades. 

“Get out of my way, girl!” Karstark snarls, huge and imposing in his leather and mail and furs. The crowd behind him rumbles agreement. 

“He is _my_ prisoner,” she insists, squaring her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height. “You cannot have him.” 

Karstark blusters and curses and tries to thrust her out of the way, but Brienne stands firm until Robb Stark arrives, his direwolf by his side, and orders Karstark to stand down. 

“He killed my sons!” Karstark roars, his eyes bright with drunken tears. 

“In open battle,” Robb Stark insists. “They died bravely and I honour their sacrifice. But if you kill him, we will lose our greatest hold on the Lannisters.” 

Karstark spits on the ground. “ _That_ for the Lannisters.” 

Lady Stark comes hurrying up to stand by her son. “Do you forget why we are here, Lord Karstark?” she demands, her voice ringing fiercely. “They have my husband. Your liege lord.” 

There is a great deal more shouting and cursing, but Robb Stark and his mother hold firm and finally Lord Karstark gives way, returning to the feast still vowing vengeance against the Kingslayer. Brienne waits until the drunken crowd has dispersed and Robb Stark gone before she finally lets her shoulders slump and takes a long, slow breath. 

It takes her a moment to realise that Lady Stark is still watching her. “That was bravely done, Lady Brienne,” she says. “Many full-grown men would have been cowed by Lord Karstark’s threats.” 

“The Kingslayer yielded to me,” Brienne says. “He is under my protection.” 

Lady Stark looks grave and troubled. “I fear that Lord Karstark will not give up so easily. If I were you, my lady, I would keep a very close watch on your prisoner. If he should die –” she trails off. “They have my daughters,” she says helplessly. 

Brienne stares at her, sees for the first time the mother beneath the mask of the great lady. 

“I will keep him safe,” she promises. “I will watch him night and day.”

Lady Stark departs with a troubled smile. 

And that’s when a lazy voice speaks from behind her – 

“And how are you going to watch me all night and day?” 

She whirls to see the Kingslayer in his wooden stockade, his golden hair streaked with mud, his handsome face battered and bloodied but his green eyes bright and mocking. 

_“Good gods,”_ he’d drawled when she raised her helm and accepted his surrender, _“are you really a woman?”_

“You’ll ride with me, rather than the prisoners,” she says decisively. 

He gets up off the ground and prowls towards her, so that only the wooden bars separate them. “And when we’ve stopped riding? Will you keep me by your side all day and all night?” 

She swallows. “In chains, ser.” 

“And what if I should get my hands on a weapon?” His eyes fall to her sword. “Are you good enough to stop me?” 

“I defeated you once,” she insists. “I can do it again.” 

Their eyes lock. 

“We’ll soon find out, won’t we,” he says.

**

Staring into his fierce green eyes, she has the uncomfortable feeling that she’s holding a wild, dangerous beast on a very thin chain.


	2. The Tent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you plan to leave me out in the rain all night?” He tips his head back and squints at her. “If I die of a chill, my father will never pay my ransom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all who have left kudos and comments! I am overwhelmed by the response to my 700 word introductory chapter :-)

The next day the Northern host departs for Riverrun. The Kingslayer rides beside Brienne on a leading rein, his hands chained together. “Is this really necessary?” he asks, brandishing his chains. “I’m hardly likely to try anything in the midst of all these Northerners.”

“You will stay in your chains, Kingslayer,” Brienne insists. 

The sun is overly bright overhead, and Brienne’s whole body aches; she’d drunk far more than usual the night previous, and before that had fought in her first battle. She’s in no mood to deal with her taunting prisoner. 

But even though he must have passed a far worse night, it does not seem to have affected his too-clever, poisonous tongue. 

“Tarth,” he says slowly, squinting at her. One of his eyes is swollen shut, but even bloodied and dishevelled he still manages to look like the Warrior incarnate. “A godsforsaken rock in the Narrow Sea, as I recall. The Evenstar is sworn to Storm’s End, isn’t he? Why do you fight for Robb Stark?” 

“Never you mind,” she says curtly. 

“Surely you should be at Highgarden,” he continues. “The mighty Stormlords and the chivalry of the Reach combined – brazen trumpets and bright banners snapping in the sky – and a young, handsome prince –”

Despite herself, she flinches. 

“Ah,” he says, his mouth curling with unholy delight. “Renly.” 

“Shut your mouth!” she hisses. “You’re not fit to even speak his name.” 

“Oh come now, my lady. Surely you knew of his proclivities? I’m afraid even you would be too much woman for him.” 

She only looks miserably ahead. 

“Don’t tell me you were in love with him?” He laughs. Bright and golden and beautiful, he throws back his head and laughs. 

She whirls in the saddle, seizes his chain and jerks him towards her. “Be. Silent!” 

But he only laughs, and laughs, and laughs. 

** 

When they stop for the night, she sets up her tent – he merely sits on his horse, providing unhelpful commentary – and drives a stake fitted with an iron loop into the ground just outside, to which she will affix his chains. The ground is soft from recent rainfall; it takes only three blows from a heavy mallet to drive the stake in deep, but even so she looks up to find him watching her with fascination. 

“What,” she spits out. 

“Are you sure you’re not a man?” he drawls. 

She jerks him down from the saddle and drags him over to the stake. It starts to rain just as she fastens his chains to the iron loop. 

“Do you plan to leave me out in the rain all night?” He tips his head back and squints at her. “If I die of a chill, my father will never pay my ransom.”

“I don’t want your ransom,” she snaps. “Your father can keep his filthy gold.” 

“Isn’t that why you came straight at me? If not gold, then glory: the Maid of Tarth, seeking to make a name for herself by defeating the Kingslayer.”

It is uncomfortably close to the truth. 

“I don’t blame you for it,” he says lightly. “I used to dream of honour and glory, once.” 

She glowers at him. “What went wrong?” 

“I put on a white cloak.” 

Just then a jagged flash of lightning illuminates the landscape, and thunder crashes almost immediately afterwards, the force of it shaking the earth underfoot. The horses start and rear, and white-blue sparks crawl over the Kingslayer’s chains. 

He laughs as he beats them out, his smile wild and fatalistic. 

“I wonder what will become of your lady’s daughters if I’m struck by lightning?” he asks. 

Cursing under her breath, she lifts the flap of her tent and ushers him inside. 

** 

Her tent is small, designed only to fit one person; Brienne is more than six feet tall and broad-shouldered, and the Kingslayer is only an inch or so shorter. It’s a tight fit, and they find themselves in uncomfortable proximity – pressed shoulder to shoulder, close enough to feel the animal warmth of him and hear his steady breathing. 

Outside, the wind howls and the storm lashes the camp, but inside her tent, lit by the dull glow of a brazier, she feels strangely aware of her own body – and of his – in a way that she’s never known before. 

She can feel every shift of his weight. 

And so when he suddenly tries to wrap his chains around her neck, she’s not caught entirely unprepared. She throws her arm up in time, pushes him down and away, and then they’re wrestling desperately in the cramped, shadowed confines of the tent while the storm rages around them, the thunder swallowing up her outraged cries and his snarling curses. He forces her to her hands and knees, but she throws him off, lashing out with her elbows and throwing up her head; she tries to pin him face down but he bucks underneath her and twists away. 

Finally she wrestles him onto his back and settles her full weight on his hips, her thighs clamped around him. No matter how he tries to throw her off, she simply holds him down – 

“Enough!” she hisses angrily, tangling her hands in his hair and slamming his head down on her bedroll. “Yield, damn you!” 

He curses angrily, but she has him well and truly pinned. Finally, he stops thrashing beneath her and lies still, his breath heaving in and out, though she can still feel his coiled strength. After a moment, he lifts his hands in surrender. “You really are a big strapping wench, aren’t you?” 

“I told you, Kingslayer,” she snarls, “my name is Brienne of Tarth.”

“And mine is Jaime,” he says. “Not Kingslayer.”

** 

Though the storm still rages and lightning crashes dangerously near, she throws him out of the tent and forces him to spend the rest of the night outside.


	3. Riverrun I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the heat of her anger, she forgets that his hands are free.

He’s a wet, bedraggled and miserable creature the next morning, glowering sullenly at her through his tangled golden hair. 

She’s not too happy either; sleep had proved elusive after she threw him out in the storm, her body hyped up with adrenaline and something _else_ – something that made her pulse pound and her blood run hot, that kept reminding her what his body had felt like, the weight and warmth of him pressed against her. 

The storm has passed, but the intermittent rain continues; they ride in miserable discomfort for long, damp hours, the Kingslayer in chains beside her, taunting and sneering, needling and probing and pressing against old wounds with vicious glee. 

She endures it in sullen silence. The first time she reacted in hot-blooded temper, he almost - _almost_ – managed to snatch her dagger.

**

That night, she leaves him chained to the stake outside her tent, but wakes in the early hours to hear Karstark men trying to kill him. After that, she commandeers a larger tent and sets up his stake inside. 

** 

Soon the army rumour mill starts to hum with talk of Robb Stark’s plans. _He plans to swap the Kingslayer for his father and sisters,_ the more credible rumourmongers say. Others say _He plans to send the Kingslayer back to his sister piece by piece_ or _He means to string him up as an example to his enemies._

“Robb Stark seems to take quite a lot for granted,” the Kingslayer says, making not-so-idle conversation in the privacy of her – their – tent. “It was not he who took me prisoner in the Whispering Wood.”

She pretends not to hear him, her attention focused on cleaning and sharpening her blade – long, rasping strokes with a whetstone, and then with an oiled cloth.

“You could demand ten thousand gold dragons for my ransom,” he continues. “Will Robb Stark recompense you for your loss?” 

“I did not capture you for ransom or reward,” she insists. She holds the blade up to the light, examining the edge for nicks and cracks. Experimentally, she swings it once or twice, feeling the balance – it’s a good, solid blade, castle-forged steel.

“For the challenge, then.” 

She looks up, startled. “How did you –?”

“Take off these chains,” he says, grinning sharply, “and we’ll have a proper duel. I promise it’ll be the best you’ve ever had.”

For a moment, she’s almost tempted. 

But – 

“No,” she says stubbornly. 

** 

Sure enough, when they arrive at Riverrun Robb Stark summons her to an audience.

“Lady Brienne,” he says, “I have sent a message to King’s Landing offering to exchange the Kingslayer for my father and sisters.” 

Brienne only nods. 

“I do not mean to rob you of what sum you might have received from Casterly Rock for his ransom. If King Joffrey accepts my terms, I will pay you myself.” 

“My lord,” Brienne says, “I don’t –”

“I would ask you, though, if my terms are accepted, to escort him back to the Lannister forces yourself. You’ve done so well at guarding him so far.”

She bows. “Of course.”

But King Joffrey does not accept the offered terms. Instead, with one swing of Ned Stark’s own blade he destroys all hope of making peace with the North. 

** 

The big, burly, roaring Northern lords proclaim independence from the south and declare Robb Stark the King in the North. 

Once again they get drunk and swear vengeance against the Lannisters. 

This time, though, it’s Lady Catelyn whom Brienne finds in her chambers, standing over prisoner with an iron poker clenched in her fist. 

“My lady!” Brienne cries, hurrying to interpose her body between them. “Please! Your daughters.” 

[Behind her, the Kingslayer laughs. “My gallant protector!” he drawls.

_“Shut your mouth,”_ she hisses at him.]

“This _monster_ crippled my son,” the new widow grinds out, her fingers clenched white around the heavy black iron. “He attacked my husband and cut Stark men down like dogs in the street.”

“Please, my lady,” Brienne coaxes. “Put the poker down. You know you cannot kill him.”

There is a long, taut silence, broken eventually by the crackle of the flames in the hearth. Brienne can feel his eyes on her, imagines his unholy smirk. 

Finally Lady Catelyn draws in a long breath, unclenches her hand and lets the poker fall to the stone floor with a loud clatter. “Keep him away from me,” she hisses, and then sweeps out. 

Brienne lets out a long, shuddering sigh. Finally she turns to the Kingslayer, watching her with green eyes bright with malice. 

“Show me your hands,” she says. 

His brows fly up and his mouth curls with laughter. But he brings his hands around from behind him, and she sees that the rope that had replaced his chains has been rubbed through; if Lady Catelyn had swung the poker, he would have seized it from her, and then – who knows what might have happened. 

“Is it true?” she demands. “Did you cripple Brandon Stark?” But she can already see the answer in his expression.

“Why? For what possible reason?” 

He only shrugs. “I was trying to kill him,” he says lightly. 

Brienne clenches her fist and punches him; a short, brutal blow that snaps his head back, splitting his lip and sending blood flying across the room. 

He only laughs. 

Enraged, she hits him again, sending him stumbling down to the bed, and she climbs over him, pinning him down as she had done the first night, her fist drawn back for a third blow. 

But in the heat of her anger, she forgets that his hands are free.

He flips her, and this time she’s the one pinned down, on her belly with the weight of him heavy on her back. “Get off me!” she snarls, twisting angrily beneath him. 

“Is that what you really want?” he taunts her, and then leans down to whisper in her ear: “I bet you long to know what it’s like to be a real woman –” 

She manages to throw him off, sending him tumbling to the stone floor, and then he’s sprawled before the hearth, firelight spilling over his battered golden beauty, _laughing_ – 

“Come, sweetling,” he says, smiling, his teeth white and bloody. “I’m willing if you are. There’s nothing like a fight to get the blood pumping.” 

She binds his hands again and leaves him tied on the other side of the chamber. 

But her body is still flushed with adrenaline, her blood running swift and hot, and all she can think about is the weight of him on her back, the heat of his breath, the rough callouses on his palms. Between her legs, her pulse beats thick and heavy, and she curls up in her bed, miserable and frustrated and angry. 

Sleep is a long time coming. 

**


	4. Riverrun II: The Armoury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out of the corner of her eye she sees him grasp a dagger, and she whips out her hand and grips his chained wrist with bruising force. “Drop it,” she hisses, as he stares at her with wild eyes. She can feel the pulse beating swiftly in his wrist, see it jumping in his throat as he swallows. 
> 
> “Make me,” he says again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *crosses fingers* Here goes nothing!

In the pre-dawn light the next morning, the practice yard at Riverrun is deserted. Save for the servants bustling in the distant kitchens, the castle is silent and calm; in the clear air she can hear the ever-present rushing of the river. 

She breathes deeply, in and out, slow and steady and deliberate, as she works her way through the sword drills Ser Goodwin had taught her. The world has always made more sense with a blade in her hand. 

But her usual calm proves elusive this morning. The memory of the previous night’s furious struggle, the rush of blood and – and _desire_ – is enough to throw her off balance; finally her feet fumble and she slows to a halt, cursing beneath her breath. 

“A woeful display.” 

Her shoulders tense, her whole body tightening with awareness of _his_ voice, _his_ presence. She thought she’d left him still sleeping, had wanted to snatch a few moments of solitude for herself – 

He strolls over to her, all lazy, insolent grace – a lead-weighted wooden practice sword in his chained hand. “What’s on your mind, sweetling?”

She throws him a burning look. “My name is –”

“Brienne, yes, I know.” He circles around her slowly, looking at her through narrowed eyes, examining her stance, her grip on the sword’s hilt. 

“What are you doing?” she demands.

“Here,” he says, “and here –” He nudges her with the flat of his wooden blade, correcting her posture, taps on her ankle as Ser Goodwin had always done. Despite herself, she responds to the corrections. “You’ve had good teachers,” he muses. “And from what I saw firsthand in the battle, excellent instincts.” 

The Northern lords and the knights of the Riverlands had fought beside her and roared out drunken toasts at the feasting, but none of them had ever offered to practice with her, or praised her skills when sober. And the Kingslayer, though vile and despicable and an oathbreaker, was accounted one of the best swordsmen in Westeros – 

“Fighting is like fucking,” he says with deliberate crudity. “If you’re too distracted, you can’t perform.” 

She draws in a sharp breath. 

“Oh come.” He mock-frowns at her. “Don’t be offended, sweetling. We both know what’s put you off balance.” 

“Hold your tongue!” she hisses.

He circles around to stand before her again, brings up his practice sword in invitation. His hands are chained – but he simply uses a two-handed grip. “Come on then,” he grins, reckless and cruel. “Make me.”

Her temper snaps. She throws herself at him, hot-headed and furious, determined to silence his wicked tongue. He blocks her instantly, disengages and sends her reeling off balance. She whirls and comes at him again, hacking and slashing, only to meet the full force of his skill; he’s much quicker than she thought, better than anyone she’s ever fought before, and even in her rage her blood begins to sing. 

The heavy clack clack clack of practice blade on practice blade fills the yard, and the shuffle of their feet and the gasping huff of their breath. When he kicks her in the chest and sends her crashing to the ground, she grunts, a deep, hoarse sound, but has no time to wallow as he comes after her, no chivalrous knight of song but an iron-fisted killer. 

She rolls desperately away and regains her feet, gasping, watching him warily as he circles her. Some part of her blind rage has been knocked out of her; she starts to think again. 

“That’s better,” he says. “But make sure you don’t overthink things.” 

He springs forward on the last word, and it’s all she can do to defend against him. He’s strong and powerful and ruthless in attack, but somehow she manages to fend him off, and in those endless moments of furious combat their eyes lock, and she feels the world slow, feels the blood rushing furiously in her veins, feels her heart pounding with fear and exultation. 

They clash again and again. He taunts and insults her, spurring her on, and he tests her to the limit of her skills, pushing her, always pushing. _Come, dance with me,_ he says, and _You can do better than that, sweetling!_ And she rises to his challenge, somehow finding untapped reserves of skill and speed, matching him, always matching him as he calls her on. 

And then his wooden blade is at her throat and hers is pressed against his belly, and they’re staring wildly into each other’s eyes, panting hoarsely, and the tension between them is unbearable – 

There’s a moment of taut, ringing silence. 

And then he drops his blade, pushes hers away and steps into her. They’re almost of a height; this close they’re pressed together breast to breast, belly to belly, and she reaches out to grasp his tunic and pull him into her. Their mouths meet, and then they’re kissing, mouths devouring, his hand tangling in her hair and tugging her head down to meet him. She groans deep in her throat and fists her hands in his golden curls, tugging, pressing herself against him wantonly. 

He shoves her up against the iron-barred door to the armoury, hard enough to make her gasp and shudder, her blood beating furiously. He presses his – his _cock_ – against her once, twice, groaning, and then the door gives way beneath their combined weight and they crash right through into the dark interior. 

He laughs, bright and reckless, as they stumble against a scarred wooden table, sending spears and knives and arrows clattering to the floor. 

Out of the corner of her eye she sees him grasp a dagger, and she whips out her hand and grips his chained wrist with bruising force. “Drop it,” she hisses, as he stares at her with wild eyes. She can feel the pulse beating swiftly in his wrist, see it jumping in his throat as he swallows. 

“Make me,” he says again. 

She tightens her grip. He groans, low and guttural, and she feels her core melt, growing hot and slick. Panting harshly, he drops the dagger and lifts her up onto the table, a reckless display of strength that thrills her more than she’d like to admit. She spreads her thighs instinctively, pulling him in, tangles her hand in that golden hair and kisses him voraciously; she feels his hand fumbling at her laces and his fingers sliding through her slick heat, and she gasps, bearing down on him, tearing her mouth free and throwing her head back – 

When he finally frees himself and pushes her down on the table, she wraps her legs around him and holds on with all of her strength as he enters her. He laughs, a short, strangled sound, throws his head back – _he’s so very beautiful,_ she thinks helplessly – and then he drives into her hard and deep, fucking her over and over until something deep and dark coiled within her finally snaps – 

She screams – or at least she would have, if he hadn’t slammed his palm over her mouth and muffled her at the last moment. 

For long, panting moments afterwards, they stare at each other in dazed shock. They’re still joined, pressed together like rutting beasts on a wooden table in the armoury while outside the castle slowly stirs and wakens. 

She reaches up, grasps his wrist and tries to pull his hand away from her mouth. For a moment, she feels the fine temptation in him, the hint of resistance – but then he lifts his hand, lifts his weight from her, and steps back as far as he can, until she finally drops her legs from around his waist. 

He looks away as he pulls out of her and tucks himself back into his breeches. She struggles back into a sitting position, cleans herself as best she can before she pulls her breeches back up and tries to straighten her hair. She feels – shaken. Fragile. 

“If you speak one word of this to anyone,” she says in a low, taut voice, “I will kill you.” 

She means it.

It would make a fine, bawdy tale: the Kingslayer in his chains deflowering the Maid of Tarth. It would destroy whatever credibility she had managed to win from the Northmen and the river lords. 

She doesn’t know what she will do if he laughs at her now. 

But when he finally meets her eyes, he looks just as shaken and shocked as she feels. 

“Not one word,” he agrees. 

** 

And so they make their unholy bargain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has now developed a tiny smidgeon of a plot to go with the p0rn. I hope you don't mind.


	5. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She hears his footsteps on the stone floor. He pauses, just for a moment, before the screen – and then deliberately crosses behind it. He’s fully dressed, and she’s naked in a too-small tub – she huddles in on herself, wet and suddenly uncomfortable, until he sinks down to sit on the floor beside her. 
> 
> They stare at one another in silence.

No one sees or hears anything amiss. No one suspects. And so Brienne goes back to her room, her captive trailing behind her, and orders one of the maidservants to draw her a bath. 

The maid frowns at her, but Brienne doesn’t care. Let the servants grumble amongst themselves. She’s almost shaking out of her skin. 

In the privacy of her chamber, she curls up in her bed. The Kingslayer crosses over to his side of the chamber and stares out the window, mercifully silent.

Until – 

“I didn’t get the chance to pull out,” he says. “You’ll need to drink moon tea.” 

She stiffens. “A fine story that will make. The Maid of Tarth asking for moon tea.” 

He sighs. “I’ll get one of the other prisoners to procure it,” he says. “One of my young cousins. They’ll hold their tongue if they know what’s good for them.” 

She doesn’t want to think of practicalities. She doesn’t want to think of anything. 

But her body aches and she can still feel him inside her, feel the weight of him holding her down, feel the pounding of his pulse as she gripped his wrist with bruising force. 

She wants to feel it again. 

Her bath comes, and she orders the servants to place it behind a painted screen. When they’re alone once more she retreats behind the divider to strip off her tunic and breeches and sinks down into the steaming water. The heat is cleansing, steadying; she closes her eyes and simply lets herself breathe.

When she finally feels more like herself again, she lifts her head and says, loud enough for him to hear: “What now?” 

She hears his footsteps on the stone floor. He pauses, just for a moment, before the screen – and then deliberately crosses behind it. He’s fully dressed, and she’s naked in a too-small tub – she huddles in on herself, wet and suddenly uncomfortable, until he sinks down to sit on the floor beside her. 

They stare at one another in silence. 

“I don’t know why you’re hiding,” he says. “We’ve already fucked.” And: “You look like a drowned rat, by the way.” 

She opens her mouth to abuse him. Shuts it. Stares at him in baffled outrage. 

What she eventually says is: “I want to do it again.” 

His brows fly up. His green eyes darken.

“Not now. But maybe tomorrow. And I don’t – I don’t want you to hold me down.” 

“I’m your prisoner,” he says, lifting his chained hands. “You won me in battle.” His mouth curls up in wicked amusement. If she hadn’t seen that brief moment of shock in the armoury, she would never have realised how much he hides behind that laughter. “Perhaps _you_ could hold _me_ down.” 

** 

That night, when she readies herself for bed on her side of the chamber and he does the same on his side, she realises that she’s grown almost used to his constant presence. 

Brought down to earth and chained, he’s no longer a mythical villain but a man. She knows the timbre of his voice and the coiled strength of his body. She knows the feel of him inside her and the rhythm of his breathing in the night. 

There are bruises on her hips in the shape of his fingers. When she presses down on them, a jolt of pleasure-pain shudders through her, and she lets out an involuntary hiss. 

Next time, she thinks, she wants to put the mark of her hands on _him_. 

**


	6. Riverrun III: the Proclamation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know,” he says, “I’ve never fucked anyone but Cersei.” His eyes flick for the merest second to Brienne, and then back to Lady Catelyn – cat-bright and full of malice.
> 
> “My lady,” Brienne says, “his words are a distraction. He lies as easily as breathing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you need it, a warning for discussion of Jaime/Cersei.

“I wish to speak with the Kingslayer,” Lady Catelyn says, her blue eyes cold as ice.

“My lady,” Brienne protests helplessly. “Surely –”

“I _will_ speak with him,” Lady Catelyn insists. She looks as fierce as any brute Northern warrior, her face stern and her mouth drawn in a grim, angry line. Clenched in her fist, Brienne sees with a sinking heart, is a copy of Stannis Baratheon’s proclamation that the boy Joffrey is no true king – nor even a trueborn Baratheon. 

Cowed, Brienne stands aside to let her enter the chamber. 

The Kingslayer is seated in the window embrasure, looking out over the bailey, one booted foot swinging idly. He looks like a picture of languid elegance, save for the chains encircling his wrists. 

He looks up when Lady Catelyn storms in. “Lady Stark,” he says lazily. “What a surprise.” 

“You crippled my son,” Lady Catelyn says, “because he saw you with the Queen. Your _sister_.” 

He tilts his head. “I don’t suppose there’s any use in denying it.” 

“You are an abomination against nature, ser!” 

He only sighs. “You know,” he says, “I’ve never fucked anyone but Cersei.” His eyes flick for the merest second to Brienne, and then back to Lady Catelyn – cat-bright and full of malice. “So in a way, I’m more faithful than your beloved husband –”

“Brienne,” Lady Catelyn snarls.

“Now what was the name of that bastard he fathered? Sand? No, Snow, that’s right –”

“My lady,” Brienne says, “his words are a distraction. He lies as easily as breathing.” 

“Your words are wind, ser,” Lady Catelyn snarls, “your oaths are meaningless, your honour – if you ever had any – is worth _nothing_.”

He leans back, all insolent grace, and only smiles. “And yet here I am, still alive, while poor, dead Ned’s head adorns the walls of the Red Keep.”

Lady Catelyn is head and shoulders shorter than Brienne, slender and far less muscular, but it’s all Brienne can do to restrain her. 

** 

“You are a liar, ser,” Brienne says, when Lady Catelyn is finally gone. 

He mock-frowns at her. “You would prefer the truth? Should I have told her that I’ve fucked you as well?” 

“Is it true?” 

“Now, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already –”

“Did you lie with your sister?” she snaps. 

He only sighs. Lifts his shoulder. Looks away, and then back, in a show of indifference. “The Targaryen kings going back to Aegon the Conqueror lay with their sisters,” he says. “Why was it acceptable for them, but not for us?” 

She opens her mouth. Closes it. 

She’d always hated when Septa Roelle had said _because_.

Brienne has never seen Queen Cersei. She and the Kingslayer are twins, it is said, as alike as two peas in a pod. 

Brienne tries to imagine a feminine mirror of his golden beauty, all wicked green eyes and knife-like smile. She tries to imagine them together. 

As she pictures it, something curls tight and hot in her belly. 

“Why did you lie with _me_ , then?” she asks. 

He slants her a look. She sees – she’s not sure what she sees. “My blood was up,” he says lightly. “It happens.”

Slowly, deliberately, she moves closer, until she’s almost standing over him. “And yet you say you’ve remained faithful. Through all your many battles and skirmishes – there must have been many times your blood was up.”

“I’ve been away from King’s Landing for months,” he says. “A man has needs.”

Slowly, deliberately, she kneels astride him and then settles her weight on him, pinning him down. This close, she can see his green eyes spark and kindle, his pupils flaring, and she reaches out, fists her hands in his golden curls and tugs. 

“You lie, ser,” she whispers. 

His smile cuts like a knife. “Cersei is the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms,” he says. “Why would I desire anyone else?” 

Her fists tighten in his hair. Pressed this close against him, she can feel his every shift of weight, his every swift inhalation. She can feel the lie in his roused cock, and though her cheeks flush hot with her own daring, she slowly, deliberately grinds against him – proving her point when he draws in his breath and groans. 

“Liar,” she breathes, and then she kisses him.

His mouth opens beneath hers, that too-clever, insolent tongue yielding to her, and he tastes of wine and something dark and masculine. She presses closer, ever closer. When he lifts his chained hands over her head, closing them over her thighs, she flinches – 

“Don’t you trust me?” he whispers against her lips. His eyes flick up to hers, wicked green and untrustworthy.

She breathes in, ragged and desperate – and decides not to care. “Not one bit,” she says, and rocks her hips against him, panting as they grind together, heat curling in her belly as she kisses him, over and over, biting and licking and devouring. He makes a low, guttural sound in his throat, and his chained hands tighten on her, pressing into the bruises he had left in the armoury; her blood runs swift and hot and she tightens her grip on him, chasing the coiling snap of release. 

She loses all track of her surroundings. Her whole being is focused on finding release, rocking against him over and over again; she has no thought for honour, or duty, or the fact that he is the enemy. 

When she comes, it’s with a low, gasping cry – 

**

Afterwards, they stare at each other in silence. 

“Is it always like that?” she asks. 

_What madness is this?_

“Always,” he says simply.


	7. Oxcross 1 - The Night Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He only sighs. “If you insist,” he says, and then slowly sinks down to his knees, his eyes fixed on hers in gleaming challenge. “Come, Lady Brienne,” he says, “let me pay homage to you.”

Ser Brynden Tully brings word that another great host has been raised in the Westerlands and is marching to reinforce Lord Tywin. Urged on by his bannermen, who call him the Young Wolf and cry out for another great victory, King Robb leads his Northmen and the river lords out on campaign.

Brienne rides with him – and with her, by her side in chains as always, rides the Kingslayer. 

** 

This time she has a much larger tent with two camp beds. She has a stand for her armour and a rack for her sword and shield and her morningstar. She has a warhorse, and a palfrey, and a hostage with a mount and belongings of his own. 

She has no servant or groom or squire, though, to care for all of these. 

“You’re not proposing that I act as your squire, are you?” he says lazily, lounging back on his camp bed. “The last knight I squired for was Ser Arthur Dayne. I don’t think you’d measure up.”

She scoffs, and throws him a darkling look. “The Sword of the Morning? Another lie, ser.” 

Despite his chains and shackles, he comes to his feet in a swift, smooth motion, startlingly swift, and she grabs instinctively at the hilt of her sword. His eyes are narrowed and his smile vicious, as if she has somehow managed to prick him on the raw. 

And then he relaxes, his smile turns maddening and insolent, and the fierceness is masked by his usual careless flippancy. 

“Oh come,” he sighs, throwing himself back down on the bed. “I haven’t always been a sister-fucking oath-breaker. Well.” He tips his head, conceding the point. “Not an oath-breaker, at the least.”

“And yet you killed the king you were sworn to protect.” 

“So I did. And such a king he was, too.” There’s a flagon of wine and two goblets on a silver platter between them. He fills a goblet, lifts it in an ironic toast. “Here’s to Aerys Targaryen, the Second of his Name – Defender of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. And to the sword that I shoved through his back.” He drinks deeply.

“Did you really squire for Ser Arthur Dayne?” she asks, fascinated despite herself.

“I did,” the Kingslayer says with simple pride – somehow the truest thing she’d ever heard him say. “When I was a boy of five and ten, green as summer grass. He knighted me on the field of battle, after the fight with the Kingswood Brotherhood.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” she says. “Nor of the Kingswood Brotherhood.”

“No?” He drinks again, his mouth twisting wryly. “Well. My other great deeds have been overshadowed by oathbreaking and regicide.” 

She eyes him curiously. Kingslayer or no, he is accounted one of the foremost swordsmen in Westeros. She has firsthand knowledge of his extraordinary skill. She has fought him one on one, and faced him on the battlefield, where he seemed almost the Warrior incarnate. His reckless courage and his skill are not in doubt. But if he was deemed worthy of knighthood by a man as honourable as Ser Arthur Dayne was reputed to be – 

“Have you any other great deeds?” she asks. 

He only laughs. “If I do, they were so long ago I can’t remember them.” Slowly, deliberately, he drains the last of the wine. “But who knows what the morrow might bring?”

** 

The morrow brings skirmishes with Lannister outriders, and then two days after that they come upon the great Lannister host led by Ser Stafford Lannister. 

There will be a battle in the morning.

“Uncle Dolt, Cersei and I used to call him,” the Kingslayer says, chuckling as he watches her pace and fret, her mind racing and unsettled. “Still, if my cousin Daven is with him, perhaps he’ll put some steel into my uncle’s spine.”

“Who knows, ser,” she replies, distracted. “If the Lannister army prevails, you may yet be returned to your sister.” 

“Perhaps.” He gets to his feet and prowls around her. “And perhaps then you’ll be the one in chains.” His voice is low and smooth and taunting. “What do you think?” He flicks his green eyes up to hers.

She is taller than he, her shoulders just as broad, and she has a sword at her side and the skill to wield it – and yet she shivers. 

“I think you’ll have a hard time holding me,” she retorts. 

“Oh, I’m strong enough.” He smiles. “More than strong enough to fuck the jitters out of you, if it means I can finally sleep.” 

She turns on him, outraged. 

“Well?” he asks. 

She considers him. He’s golden and beautiful and fierce, and a low, animal stirring of lust curls through her as she remembers the shock of release he’d given her during their coupling in the armoury, and that she’d taken when she held him down and ground against him in her chambers. 

She’d slept like a babe afterwards, both times. 

“Oh, very well,” she says crossly. 

“As my lady commands.” He bows ironically. “Now – how will we go about this…?” He makes a show of looking her up and down. “Take off your breeches,” he says.

She frowns at him. “I don’t like being held down,” she complains. 

He only sighs. “If you insist,” he says, and then slowly sinks down to his knees, his eyes fixed on hers in gleaming challenge. “Come, Lady Brienne - let me pay homage to you.”

The low stirring of lust is like a great beating of wings now, the blood pooling and throbbing in her – in her _cunt_. She’d heard of such things, of course, and caught glimpses of it sometimes, though usually it was a woman on her knees before a man. How would it work…?

Oh. _Oh._ She flushes, feeling herself grow wet and slick. But – 

Why had he used that phrase? 

“Did you _pay homage_ to the Queen?” she asks. 

“You don’t wish me to treat you like a queen?” he mocks her. 

Her fists clench. She strides forward and tangles her hand in his hair, pulling his head back. “You will stop laughing at me, ser,” she hisses. 

His mouth curls in one of those unholy smiles. 

“Make me,” he says. 

And so she does.

She unlaces her breeches and drags his mouth to her cunt. 

By the time he has finished paying homage with his soft lips and his rough, warm tongue, she’s flushed and boneless and replete, all her jitters banished. 

** 

The next morning, armed and fully armoured – he had helped, eventually – and clad in a rose and azure surcoat emblazoned with the arms of Tarth, she swings up onto her warhorse and settles herself in the saddle. 

He comes out to see her off, blinking in the pre-dawn light. “Take this,” he says, handing her a strip of red cloth torn from his crimson tunic. “All knights should have a favour to carry into battle.”

“Not a kiss?” she asks flippantly, winding the cloth around her wrist and pulling the ends tight. 

He looks at her, his mouth curling, his green eyes gleaming, and suddenly she remembers the night previous –

“Later, perhaps,” he says. “If you survive.” With that, he slaps her horse on the flank and raises his hand in salute, and she rides off to join the group of knights and lords surrounding the Young Wolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I realise that Jaime, as Robb's most valuable hostage, would probably never be allowed to leave Riverrun - but this *is* a PWP, so. 
> 
> Also, apologies for the use of the term "jitters". I couldn't think of a suitable Westerosi equivalent.


	8. Oxcross II - After the battle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s still wearing her breastplate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this has now developed *feelings*. I hope you don't mind?

The battle is – brutal. Bloody. Exhilarating. 

Brienne has never felt so alive. 

She fights, and fights, and fights, shouting hoarsely as she swings her sword and bludgeons her way through foe after foe, the impact of each blow a dull shock to her system. Her heart is racing, but she’s never felt so calm; everything happens incredibly quickly, and yet time seems to slow to a crawl. 

She thinks she understands, now, why _he_ could laugh with such reckless joy even in defeat. 

** 

After the battle, there’s a feast. The men whom she fought beside hail her with loud cheers, and she drinks toast after toast – to their victory; to Houses Stark and Tully; to the King in the North; to this lord and that; even to death to the Lannisters, which draws a thunderous roar of approval.

More than one of the Northmen propositions her. 

“By all the gods!” one of them roars, his burly shoulders fur-clad, wine dribbling into his thick beard. “You’re a woman to face the winters with.” 

But Brienne’s blood is pounding, her body quivering with pent-up energy, and she doesn’t want a big, barrel-chested brute, she wants – 

She wants – 

She staggers back to her tent, throws open the flaps, and finds him waiting up for her with a knowing, insolent smile. Her own golden prisoner, in chains – 

He’s so beautiful in the light of the braziers, so gloriously southern and decadent and everything she’s not supposed to want. She strips off her sword-belt and reaches for him, grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him into her, graceless and unmindful of her own strength, and she kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, pushing him back towards the camp bed and following him down, eager to get her hands on his smooth, warm skin. 

She’s drunk, and clumsy with it; he flips her so that she’s on the bottom, his weight deliciously warm and solid on her, and he grasps her wrists in his chained hands and stretches them out over her head. She arches and writhes, rolling her hips up into him – he laughs in her ear, nipping at her lips as he kisses her, trails his mouth down her throat and he drags her breeches down and he – and he – 

Afterwards, when she comes back to herself, she’s lying sprawled on her back on the camp bed, still wearing her breastplate, her breeches unlaced, and he’s lying entwined with her, watching her with cool, cat-green eyes. 

“Don’t do that again,” he says. “It’s dangerous.”

She frowns at him. “…What?”

He grasps her left wrist, the one still adorned with his favour, and slowly stretches it out over her head. She has a vague recollection of him doing that before, of being held down by all that strength – 

Her head is still wreathed with fumes, and her thoughts are slow and confused. 

“Your blood was up,” he whispers in her ear. “You were drunk and flying high on victory, and you thought yourself invincible. But I could have done _anything_ to you.” 

A shock of ice cold realisation shocks her. She jerks beneath him, but he’s straddling her hips, now, his weight pressing down on her. Her right hand is free, and she reaches for her dagger – but her sword-belt is discarded, her weapons lying on the floor. 

She twists and tries to flip him, but she’s drunk and clumsy and he’s too _strong_ – 

“Let go of me,” she hisses, her hips shifting beneath him. She can feel his cock hot and hard against her, pressing into the junction of her thighs, and she shudders, the blood beating fast and hot in her veins. “I don’t like being held down.” 

He leans down, so close that his long hair brushes her face and his lips brush her cheek. His eyes are wicked green in the dull light, filled with bright challenge. 

“Liar,” he whispers. 

Her right hand is free. She clenches it into a fist, her mind racing. She could strike him in the temple, or go for his eyes or his throat; she could do any number of things to stop him. 

But he’s kissing her, now, his lips soft and his teeth sharp, and she sighs into the kiss, her left hand flexing in his hold, her right coming up to draw him even closer. She makes a low, hungry sound, and he laughs softly. “When I let go of your hand,” he says, “stay exactly as you are.” And she does, arching and sighing as he coaxes her thighs apart and combs through the wiry golden hair between her legs, slipping one rough, calloused finger into her slick wet folds, and then two, stroking and circling the sensitive little nub, before bending down to taste her with his soft, rasping tongue. 

Her legs kick out and her hips arch with every twist of his fingers and tongue, but he holds her down with an arm across her waist; she curses him angrily and demands that he follow through with his promises, damn him, and he only laughs. 

Finally, finally, he unlaces his own breeches and moves over her, settling himself between her thighs and staring down at her with burning green eyes. 

“Well?” he asks. She can feel him against her, hot and hard. 

She’s lying stretched out beneath him, her legs spread, her left hand still stretched out above her head. Her right hand is free; she grasps one of his chained hands and laces their fingers together. “Go on then,” she says. “Do it.” 

With a slow, wicked grin, he pushes into her wet heat, and she gasps, her hips rising up to meet him as he fills her. He’s slow and careful at first, watching her for any sign of discomfort; for all their wicked games and their one-upmanship, they have rarely fucked. It’s too intimate, too raw, leaves them both too vulnerable. 

She’s still wearing her breastplate. 

With a long, moaning sigh, she wraps her legs around his waist and they move together, their bodies sweat-slick, their breaths gasping and their mouths tangling, and pleasure coils deep within her, stoked with every thrust. She pants and groans as she arches beneath him, meeting him thrust for thrust, blind to everything but the sweet, ephemeral pleasure just out of her reach – 

She comes with a gasping cry, shuddering helplessly beneath him, her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her left hand grasping at nothing. He follows just after, burying his face in her shoulder and groaning, his golden body shaking as he collapses on her, warm and heavy and replete. 

In the silence afterwards, their breathing is heavy and gasping, their bodies slick with sweat and still shuddering with aftershocks. She stares at him, her eyes wide, and sees him staring back.

He reaches up, gently, and pulls her left wrist down, his fingers toying with the scrap of crimson fabric he’d given her. 

“I want to fuck you again,” he says – utterly serious, without any hint of laughter or teasing or challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not mentioned, but definitely what happened immediately after: Brienne drinks her moon tea.


	9. Riverrun IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What,” he breathes, “don’t tell me mine is the first touch between your legs, sweetling.” Something about that makes his eyes go very dark. “Don’t tell me your only taste of pleasure has been at my hands.”

On their return to Riverrun, she orders a bath brought to her chambers. There, before the fire, behind her painted wooden screen, she strips off her armour, her shirt and trousers and heavy boots, and slips into the copper tub full of steaming water. Scented oils swirl on the surface; the air smells of exotic spices and far-off lands. 

This time he doesn’t wait until she summons him; he strolls behind the divider and sinks down onto the stone floor beside her tub. Once again, he’s fully clothed.

This time she doesn’t hunch in on herself, shocked and shaking, but stares defiantly at him, daring him to fulfil his whispered promise: _I want to fuck you again._

“Well?” she asks. 

He picks up the sponge and a bar of soft, finely milled soap. “You’ve got blood on your neck,” he says. 

Slowly, he washes her, his beautiful, calloused hands – the hands that had killed Aerys Targaryen and thrown Bran Stark from a tower window – gentle as he slowly drags the sponge over her wet skin. It’s silent in her chambers, save for their slow breathing, the clinking of his chains and the sound of the water lapping against the tub; she can hear her pulse pounding as he drags the sponge over her chest, down to her tiny breasts. 

His eyes are fixed on her nipples, slowly tightening in the chill air. When he looks back up to meet her wide gaze, his green eyes are filled with hunger; slowly, inexorably, he discards the sponge and leans over to take her nipple into his mouth, suckling strongly. It sends a bolt of sensation through her; she arches, groaning deep in her throat, and clutches his thick golden hair in her wet hands, holding him against her as he licks and pulls at her and swirls his tongue until she’s gasping and twisting helplessly. 

Finally he releases her with one last lick of his rasping tongue, his eyes flicking up to her. 

“More,” she manages to rasp out. 

His lips curl up into a smile. He shakes his hair free of her grasping hands – for a moment she clutches at him, unwilling to let go – and takes up the sponge again. This time he drags the sponge across her breasts, her muscled belly, her strong thighs and calves, drawing closer and closer to the centre of her with each slow, dragging stroke. 

His eyes remain fixed on hers, filled with dark hunger and wicked challenge, and finally he abandons the sponge and his hand is between her legs, his strong fingers slipping into her, the heavy iron of his manacle pressing against the tiny nub – 

She gasps, her hips rising instinctively, sending a wave of warm water washing over the side of the tub.

“This,” he whispers, “is your cunt, Lady Brienne. And this little nub,” he grinds the manacle against it, sending a jagged streak of sensation across her nerves, “is the seat of your pleasure. Have you never played with it, in your lonely bed in the dark hours of night, dreaming of bright knights and handsome princes?” 

She shakes her head, her pulse hammering in her ears. 

“What,” he breathes, “don’t tell me mine is the first touch between your legs, sweetling.” Something about that makes his eyes go very dark. “Don’t tell me your only taste of pleasure has been at my hands.” 

He surges forward and kisses her hungrily, all teeth and tongue, and she rises to meet him, her hands wrapping around his shoulders and tangling in his hair. His hands are still working between her thighs, long fingers curling deep within her and brushing against something that makes her shudder and convulse; she’s sleek and wet and straining in his arms, and he – 

He drags her wet, dripping body up, her too-broad shoulders, muscled torso and long, muscular legs, and in one swift, powerful movement lifts her and carries her to her fur-draped bed. She makes a startled sound when he lays her down and climbs over her, still fully clothed while she’s naked and wet. 

“All those bright knights and handsome princes,” he whispers in her ear, rolling his hips against her, his voice low and gritty, “those perfect, chivalrous heroes, you would have crushed them in an instant. But not me,” he says, roughly jerking at the laces of his breeches. “I’m no perfect hero.” 

He leans down to kiss her again, and she moans low in her throat as their tongues meet. Dimly she’s aware that he’s coaxing her thighs up around his waist, fitting himself to her. 

He tears his mouth away. “I’m strong enough for you,” he whispers. 

And then he fills her with one stroke. She throws her head back, her thick, corded neck straining, and in the firelit shadows of her chamber, with the brush of fur coverings against her naked skin, they writhe and groan and strain against each other, hands clutching, bodies striving, until the now-familiar pleasure overtakes her and she knows nothing more. 

** 

She wakes, later, to find the fire burned down and him lying across from her, breathing gently in sleep. His left hand is loosely clasped over hers, his fingers tangled in the scrap of red ribbon still tied around her left wrist.


	10. Riverrun V - The Sept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jaime Lannister has been dismissed from the Kingsguard,” Lady Catelyn says. She holds a rolled up scroll in her shaking hands. “They mean to marry Sansa to him by proxy.” She looks at Brienne, at King Robb. “We cannot let that happen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look - plot! No p0rn in this chapter, but we will definitely make up for it with the next.

Perhaps inevitably, the outside world intrudes on the hushed silence of her chamber and interrupts their little games. 

Winterfell falls. 

Stannis Baratheon’s fleet is destroyed in Blackwater Bay and his army put to flight. 

Alliances shift and reform, and King Joffrey puts aside his Stark betrothal for an alliance with the Tyrells. Which means – 

** 

King Robb summons Brienne to a private audience. Lady Catelyn is there also, looking pale and grim.

“Jaime Lannister has been dismissed from the Kingsguard,” Lady Catelyn says. She holds a rolled up scroll in her shaking hands. “They mean to marry Sansa to him by proxy.” She looks at Brienne, at King Robb. “We cannot let that happen.”

“Lady Brienne,” King Robb says, curiously hesitant. “I would not ask this of you if there were any other way.”

“Your grace?” she asks, wary and unsure. 

“ _You_ must marry him,” he says. 

**

She walks back to her chambers in a daze.

“Well?” the Kingslayer asks, when she has bolted the heavy oak door behind her and they are alone. “What says the Young Wolf?” 

She sits down heavily in a chair. Looks at him, and wonders where to begin. 

“You have been dismissed from the Kingsguard,” she says. 

She thinks he flinches, a little. “My esteemed father’s doing, no doubt. Go on.” 

“Your father means to proxy-marry you to Sansa Stark.” 

He stands up abruptly, paces over to the window. “Go on.” 

Her mouth has gone strangely dry. “King Robb and Lady Catelyn say…” She swallows, forces herself to go on. “They will make you marry _me_ , before the proxy marriage can occur.”

He turns. They stare at each other in silence for what seems a long, long time.

“And how will they make me do anything?” he asks. 

Before she can answer, armed guards burst into the room and surround him. 

**

The sept at Riverrun is filled with light. 

Brienne wears a rich velvet surcoat embroidered with the arms of Tarth, her sword belted around her waist, and her best breeches and boots. The maiden’s cloak hastily made up by the castle’s seamstresses drapes down her back, the weight of it almost choking her. 

They drag him into the sept, vilely drunk, the assembled guests whistling and cheering as the guards prod him with swords and spear-points until he takes his place by her side. 

Even drunk, manhandled and sullen, he still manages to project an air of raffish haughtiness; the villainous Kingslayer, still dangerous despite his chains. 

He does not look at her. She remembers the look in his eyes as she’d allowed the guards to drag him away. 

The septon drones on and on through the introductory prayers, waving his censor and lifting his crystal on high. Once, Brienne had dreamed of marrying a perfect knight or a handsome prince, but now here she stands beside Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, oathbreaker and sister-fucker – 

She knows his strength and his skill. She knows the weight of him holding her down. She knows the coiled strength of him beneath her hands, hers to command, and the feel of him buried deep inside her. 

She is acutely conscious of him beside her, a chained, dangerous lion, strong and fierce and vital. 

When the septon asks if she will take Jaime Lannister for her husband, she says yes. 

When the septon asks _him_ if he will take her for his wife, he finally meets her eyes. There’s a drunken, surly challenge in them, even as the captain of King Robb’s guards puts the edge of a sword to his throat – 

_Make me,_ he says without words.

But this is one thing she can’t force him to do. 

He smiles, that old, mocking, unholy smile. The spears at his back prick him, and the blade at his throat presses harder, opening a thin red line below his jaw. But finally – finally – he answers _I will._

When he sweeps off her maiden’s cloak and drapes her in a crimson Lannister cloak – the same cloak he’d been wearing when she took him prisoner in the Whispering Wood – the warmth and scent of him envelops her and she feels almost dizzy. 

And so the septon pronounces them to be one heart, one flesh, one soul, and she turns to him and says _I am his, and he is mine,_ and then – 

And then – 

Just like that, they are man and wife. 

**

_If he does not marry you, we will see that he is unable to marry at all,_ King Robb had said. _Lord Tywin’s wrath be damned._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter - the bedding :-)


	11. Riverrun VI - The Marriage Chamber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She sits down heavily beside him on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know you didn’t want this.” Despite herself, she rests her palm on his muscled abdomen; his skin is soft and warm, and she can feel the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
> 
> “You yielded to me in the Whispering Wood,” she says, remembering the impossible triumph of that moment: the cruel, fierce golden lion, bowing his head to _her_. “I swore to protect you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Northmen make them do it. 
> 
> Featuring chains, firelit confessions, messy feelings and even intimacy. (But. Um. Not much porn at all. Sorry?!)

The River Lords and the Northern bannermen insist on a wedding feast. It’s no celebration, but rather an excuse to pull the lion’s tail – and not the Kingslayer’s tail, either. This feast – and probably the marriage itself – is an insult meant to bait and enrage Tywin Lannister. 

The Kingslayer sits in haughty, sullen pride, even in his chains; the cutting edge of his smile grows sharper and more vicious with every mock-toast raised in his honour. 

He does not look at Brienne. 

** 

When the guests start calling drunkenly for the bedding, Brienne stands abruptly and stalks away before any of them dare to approach her. Her bridegroom is not so fortunate; the drunken lords and bannermen seize him, drag him into the marriage chamber, strip him down to his breeches and chain him to the bed. 

“A wedding night right out of song!” one jests as they depart to stand witness outside the room, and “The bear and the maiden fair!” says another. “Only which is which?” They laugh uproariously. 

When Brienne is finally alone with _him_ , she turns to the bed. 

Whatever she might have said – an apology, perhaps, or an explanation – is forestalled by the gleam of angry malice in his eyes. 

“Ah, my blushing bride,” he drawls, slurring his words only a little. “No doubt you’re eager to consummate our marriage. I’m afraid you’ll have to do all of the work yourself, though. I’m a little tied up at the moment.”

Outside, the guests shout and laugh and offer crude suggestions.

The fire hisses and pops, the warm play of light and shadow illuminating the large velvet-canopied bed, and his sleek golden body, splayed out on the thick furs. Hers, all hers – 

But not like this. She doesn’t want him like this.

“Jaime,” she says, and then stops. It’s the first time she’s ever called him by name. “We don’t have to –”

“No?” he considers this. “Those cunts outside will be terribly disappointed. And what of tomorrow morning, when they examine the sheets?”

“I’ll cut my finger.”

He laughs cruelly. “If only they thought to examine the table in the armoury.” 

She winces, but gathers up all her courage to approach the bed. Drunk, angry, cornered and humiliated, he’s more than capable of lashing out with his vicious tongue – words may be wind, but he knows how to hurt her.

Finally, she’s standing over him, looking down. They’d chained him spread-eagled to the bedposts, and his muscles bunch and coil as he tries his strength against the chains.

“Just climb on and get it over with,” he says. 

She draws herself up. “I am not a raper,” she says indignantly. 

For a moment, the familiar laughing irony returns. “Do you know,” he muses slowly, “in this light you could almost be a knight? One of those perfect ones from the tales, who never have to face impossible choices or compromise their honour.” 

She sits down heavily beside him on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know you didn’t want this.” Despite herself, she rests her palm on his muscled abdomen; his skin is soft and warm, and she can feel the slow rise and fall of his breathing.

“You yielded to me in the Whispering Wood,” she says, remembering the impossible triumph of that moment: the cruel, fierce golden lion, bowing his head to _her_. “I swore to protect you.” 

“Oh, sweetling,” he drawls. “You also swore fealty to Robb Stark. Which of those vows took precedence today?”

She looks at him, startled. 

“If you’re not careful,” he continues, “they’ll make you swear and swear and swear. So many vows, you’ll find it impossible to keep them all. And then one day –” he tips his head, smiles unpleasantly. “– one day you’ll have to choose.” 

They sit in silence for a long time. Her palm still rests on his warm skin. His eyes are half-closed, his breathing slow. But she knows that he’s awake and aware. Gradually the raucous shouting and laughter from outside grows fainter and fainter, until they could be the only two people in the world.

She stares at him. “You spoke of choosing,” she says, in a very quiet voice. “Was killing Aerys the choice you made?”

He’s silent for a long, long time. His eyes are very dark, the bright gleam dulled by drink and fatigue. “He was a monster,” he finally answers. “True knights are supposed to slay monsters and protect the innocent, aren’t they? Not the other way round.”

The fire in the hearth crackles and flickers, loud in the hushed silence. In the firelight, he appears almost gilded, like the statue of the Warrior in the sept at Evenfall Hall. Almost against her will, she trails her fingers across his chest, feeling the muscles twitch and quiver beneath her touch; not a god, not even a great hero or an evil villain, but just a man. 

The familiar coil of want stirs deep within her. Slowly, her heart pounding at her own daring, she leans down and kisses him. His lips open beneath hers and he sighs into the kiss, lying back and closing his eyes, relaxing beneath her. 

“Go on, then, Brienne,” he says almost gently. “Do it.”

It’s the first time he’s ever called her by name. 

Her hands go to the laces of his small-clothes, and she slowly, slowly frees him. He’s only slightly erect, but she clasps him in her broad, calloused palm; he lets out a long, groaning sigh, and she gently coaxes him to full readiness. 

She strips off her boots and her breeches and climbs over him, steadying herself with her hands on his shoulders, straddling his hips. Slowly, carefully, she sinks down on him, wincing a little but determined. 

This is not about fantasy or passion or hot-blooded excitement. It’s not even one of their wicked little games. 

This is – this is _trust_ , she thinks, as she slowly leans down to kiss him, her hands clasping his, her hips slowly working as she rides him. When he finally stiffens beneath her and comes, his eyes fly open and she stares down into his true self, stripped of all his masks. 

**

“I’m sorry,” she says again, long hours later. “I didn’t mean to trap you.”

She’s lying curled up against him on the bed, her left hand with its crimson favour resting over his heart. 

“I’ve spent my whole life caged by vows and expectations,” he says lightly, retreating once more behind irony. “What’s one more?” 

She lifts her head. “I won’t force you to choose.” 

He only laughs. “Oh, sweetling,” he says. “You can’t promise that. No one can.”

**

Finally, tangled together, they sleep.

**


	12. Applegarth I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three days after their departure from Riverrun, they finally reach their destination: an old, long-forgotten keep, crumbling with time and neglect. The stone walls are covered with ivy and climbing roses, the bailey overgrown with herb gardens long gone to seed, a tangled thicket of roses, and half a dozen gnarled apple trees, white flowers falling like snow.

Two days after the wedding, Jaime almost escapes. 

The attempted break-out, engineered by Jaime’s clever brother Tyrion, is a fantastic scheme involving false envoys sent to Riverrun under a banner of peace, one of whom was some sort of mummer who could imitate voices – and it comes very, very close to succeeding. In the confusion, Jaime seizes a sword and cuts his way almost to freedom – only to come face to face with Brienne. 

** 

Robb Stark sends them both away. 

“It’s better this way,” he says, his blue eyes grave. “Keep him close, Lady Brienne.”

**

Three days after their departure from Riverrun, deep in the furthest backwoods of the Riverlands, they finally reach their destination: an old, long-forgotten keep, crumbling with time and neglect. The stone walls are covered with ivy and climbing roses, the bailey overgrown with herb gardens long gone to seed, a tangled thicket of roses, and half a dozen gnarled apple trees, white flowers falling like snow. 

They stable their horses and make their way inside. It’s old, and neglected, but the walls are sound enough and the defences solid; the great hall – such as it is – is hung with motheaten banners and the ruins of past glories, the lord’s seat tipped over on its side on the raised dais. 

At the very top of the keep there is a spacious chamber flooded with golden light, a cracked stained-glass window casting jewelled shadows across the dusty stone floor. The light falls over a large fireplace and two comfortable armchairs, a battered table holding the ancient remains of a meal and a long-empty flagon, and a great four-poster bed draped with tattered silk curtains. 

Jaime throws himself down on the bed, sending a cloud of fine dust motes dancing and spinning in the air, and laughs. “What a fine lovers’ bower!”

Brienne sighs. “The keep is called Applegarth,” she says. “It’s been abandoned for years, since the last lord died at the siege of Pyke. Old Lord Hoster never appointed another to his place.”

“And so the Young Wolf gave it to you.” Jaime sits up, his eyes gleaming with ironic challenge. “A fine reward for your loyal services – both martial and marital.”

She glowers at him. “I want no reward.” 

“Only respect,” he says. “Only honour. Well. All those men who hailed you after the battle – how quick they were to mock you at the wedding feast. And this – this ruin of a keep – would you call it a prize? Lannisters at least know how to pay their debts handsomely.” 

“And do you think the men of the Westerlands would show me any more respect?” she demands. “Men are all the same, no matter their origins or their loyalties. Even you,” she says scornfully.

He makes an offended noise. “There are no men like me,” he says. “There’s only me.”

She ignores the monumental vanity of that statement.

“Well. After your brother’s rescue attempt failed, it was either this or the dungeons.” 

He looks at her, brows raised. “Did you honestly believe I would refuse the opportunity to escape?” 

** 

Things are still – off – between them. 

Jaime is elusive and capricious, still humiliated and enraged by the forced wedding and bedding; Brienne, too, had been humiliated by the drunken jeering of the Northmen and the River lords. 

The only thing that had carried them through that awful night was the thin, fragile thread of trust that lay between them.

And then he had tried to escape, and she’d tried to stop him. They’d fought, swords slashing and cutting, and he’d nicked her on the thigh and she’d opened a cut above his eye, and they’d cursed and snarled at each other, lost in their conflict until one of the Tully guardsmen had brought him down with a spear-haft to the back of his head. 

Brienne had turned on the hapless guardsman, snarling, before the Blackfish brought her back to herself. 

** 

There’s work enough to distract her from her frustration. 

She starts with the great hall, tearing down the banners and clearing away the dust and debris of years of abandonment. Brienne throws herself wholeheartedly into the work, wielding an old broom with angry force.

After a while, she realises that Jaime is watching her. “What in Seven Hells are you doing?” he demands.

She glares at him, then at the broom in her hand. Surely it should be obvious? “Sweeping,” she says. “Why?” 

He prowls closer, circles around her as he had done that day in the practice yard. 

“That’s servants’ work,” he says dismissively. 

“Do you see any servants here?” she snaps. “We’re not so high and mighty on Tarth that I’m afraid to get my hands dirty. Who else is going to do it?” 

He reaches out and takes the broom from her, strokes his thumb over her dirt-streaked palm, where the broom has rubbed against the skin – a different pattern of wear to the callouses from her sword. 

The swipe of his thumb sends a bolt of sensation straight to her core. She draws in a shaky breath, and his eyes flick to hers for a heated moment. 

“I don’t know what the women of Tarth do,” he says, “but the ladies of Casterly Rock do not engage in menial labour.”

Holding her gaze all he while, he lifts her hand to his lips and presses an open-mouthed kiss not to the backs of her fingers, not even to her wrist, but to her open palm. His breath is hot, and the raw carnality of it makes her gasp.

But she’s still frustrated and angry, and so she snatches her hand away. “I’ll wager your sister’s hands are lily-white and soft,” she hisses, her blood pounding. “She probably bathes in asses’ milk and wears smallclothes of the finest linen. No wonder you can’t wait to get back to her.”

He takes a step back, and then grins cruelly, baring his sharp white teeth. “That’s where you’re wrong, wife,” he says. “Cersei wears nothing but silk against her skin.” 

She tries to punch him. His chained hands fly up and he grabs her wrist, cat-quick, and spins her round, pulling her flush against him. 

“Let go, you – you cunt,” she snarls, as his hands snake down to her laces and his long fingers plunge into her own worn linen smallclothes. 

He bites down on the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Despite herself she lets out a long, groaning sigh. “No,” he whispers in her ear. 

He rolls his hips, pushing his roused cock against her; she twists in his arms, drags his head to hers and they kiss, biting and nipping and devouring. 

As with most of their couplings, it’s a fight for dominance; this time it’s he who tumbles her to her hands and knees on the dusty floor, nudging her thighs wide and wrestling her breeches down to her knees. She gasps, startled, when he presses his open palm between her shoulder-blades – but it’s not nearly enough to force her down if she doesn’t want to go. 

The blood is pounding in her veins, and despite everything she’s known nothing but pleasure at his hands, so she bows down for him, arching her back. He puts his mouth on her, laving her slick wet folds with his rasping tongue until she’s flushed and gasping and ready, and then he wraps his arm around her waist, pulls her hips against him and drives into her with a long groan. In this position, he fills her more deeply than ever before; she cries out, shocked, but then pushes eagerly back to meet him - they fuck like animals, fully clothed on the dusty stone floor, but it’s so, so good she doesn’t care. 

The clinking of his chains, the sounds of their coupling and their gasping and groaning cries echo loudly in the vaulted hall, and when they both come it’s with a hoarse, desperate shout.

** 

Afterwards they lie tangled together, breathless and panting, until the aftershocks slowly fade. 

Finally they untangle their arms and legs and roll away onto their sides, so that they’re gazing solemnly at each other, face to face. 

She catches his hand and threads her fingers through his. 

“Let’s call a truce, Jaime,” she says. “We’re bound together forever, now. You and me against the world.”

He stares at her for a long, long time. “Once, I was one half of a whole,” he says simply. “And now even that is tangled.”

She waits. 

“A truce, then,” he finally agrees. 

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so begins their honeymoon. Next chapter: *all* the p0rn. Promise.


	13. Applegarth II - The Enchanted Idyll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isolated as they are, alone in their old, forgotten keep, they could be the only two people in the world.

They wake in the dawn light, pressed together warmly in the four-poster bed. Birds call, and sunlight pours in through the tower windows; Jaime stirs, his muscles flexing, and presses lazily against her. “Again?” he murmurs. Slowly, he nuzzles her breasts and begins to kiss his way down her belly. 

She pushes him away before he can reach his goal. “Not yet.” If he gets his mouth on her, her resolve will melt away like ice in the sun. 

He only sighs, and rolls away onto his back. She throws aside the covers and rises from the bed, stark naked, flushing a little beneath his gaze. 

“Well?” she asks, padding across to the fireplace to stoke up the fire, swinging a little iron kettle filled with water over the flames. Carefully she measures in a pinch of herbs and waits for it to come to the boil. 

All the while, she’s conscious of his eyes on her. 

“There’s no need to stare,” she says. “I know what I look like.” 

“I’ll stare if it pleases me, wife,” he retorts. 

Still, she feels self-conscious, and so throws on a nightshirt, resolutely ignoring his disapproving tutting sound.

When it’s finally ready, the moon tea is bitter on her tongue. Ignoring the taste, she forces herself to drink the entire cup, as she does every single morning. 

Finally she turns back to the bed. Jaime is watching her morning ritual with fascination, lounging in the bed like a great golden lion. 

“You could do your part and pull out,” she says. 

He only grins. “The last time I tried to pull out before I was done,” he replies, “you locked those legs around my back and refused to let go.”

She makes a face. It’s true enough. She likes the intimacy of finishing together, the feeling of him shuddering and coming apart in her arms. 

Just thinking about it is enough to arouse a low curl of interest. She eyes him, sprawled naked beneath the covers, the morning light trailing lovingly over his chest and shoulders and his long golden hair. 

“I can feel your eyes on me.” He stretches deliberately, arching his golden body, flaunting his chained wrists. “Shall we play a little game?” 

“Jaime –” she bites her lip. 

“Imagine that you were a great warrior queen,” he says, grinning wickedly. “Imagine that you took a golden prize on the battlefield, and kept him for your own. Imagine that he was the first – and only – man you ever took into your bed, into your body – for no one else could ever please you like he did.”

“Oh,” she breathes, pressing her thighs together, lust curling deep in her belly at the fantasy conjured up by his wicked, wicked tongue. 

“Come, my queen,” he drawls, trailing his fingers down the line of hair on his chest and toying with the covers at his waist. “I’m yours to command.”

She rips the covers away. He laughs softly as she swings her leg over him and straddles his waist. He sits up, a magnificent display of strength, his stomach flexing with muscle, and loops his chained hands over her head so that he can slide his arms around her waist; she presses close and cups his unshaven cheeks, stroking the golden stubble with her fingertips.

“Stop talking and let me fuck you,” she says. 

His eyes are bright with laughter, but his strong hands steady her as she slowly sinks down and takes him into her body. 

“Take off this – sack,” he says, tugging at the nightshirt. “Warrior queens aren’t ashamed of their magnificence.” 

She scowls at him. “I’ll wear a nightshirt if it pleases me,” she retorts, and he grins appreciatively. 

“Now,” she sighs, arching languorously, “put that mouth of yours to better use.” He kisses her, lush and languid, and she tangles her hands in his long hair, and slowly she begins to ride him, rising and falling like the tide. 

** 

Isolated as they are, alone in their old, forgotten keep, they could be the only two people in the world. 

She and Jaime spend the daylight hours doing what they can to restore Applegarth to its former state. Together they clear out the great hall and throw out the accumulated rubbish of years of neglect. When that’s done, they go exploring, curious to see what treasures they might uncover in the storerooms or the armoury or the cellars. 

“We used to go exploring in the forgotten corridors of Casterly Rock,” Jaime says. “There are storerooms with furniture and tapestries dating back to before the Conquest.” 

Brienne tells him of the curious shield she once saw in the armoury at Evenfall Hall, the long-faded depiction of an elm tree and a falling star.

Jaime’s eyes brighten with interest. “Ser Duncan the Tall,” he breathes. “But how came his shield to Tarth?” 

“I don’t know,” she says. “No one knows.” 

The armoury at Applegarth holds no relics of ancient Kingsguard knights, but they find spears and bows and axes, half-gone to rust and neglect, and two serviceable swords – no glorious blades of legend, but solid, castle-forged steel. 

“May I have this dance?” Jaime asks, taking the sword in his chained hands and swinging it, testing the balance. 

The packed dirt of the practice yard is now overgrown with wild grasses and tiny white and yellow flowers. They fight, Jaime calling out taunting instructions, Brienne pushing herself to match him.

During the long months at Riverrun, when she had fought beside the Northmen and the River lords and trained with the master at arms, she had learned many new techniques to add to Ser Goodwin’s teaching; now Jaime taught her even more. He had been trained by the best masters at arms in the Westerlands. He had been part of Aerys Targaryen’s Seven, surely one of the most celebrated gatherings of great knights in history; he had learned from Ser Arthur Dayne, from Prince Lewyn Martell and Ser Barristan Selmy. 

And now as the long, golden days pass, with the scent of roses and growing things heavy on the sun-warmed air and apple blossoms falling like drifting snow, he teaches her all that he knows. 

** 

The fighting is exhilarating, as always. After their first match ends in a hard-fought draw, their blood pounding, they crash through the doors of the armoury again, wrestling with their clothes and exchanging biting kisses. When Jaime bends her face down over the table and drags her breeches down, unbuckling his belt, she doesn’t thrash and snarl but only arches her back as he readies her; when he mouths the nape of her neck and pushes into her, she reaches back and digs her clawed fingers into his bare arse, spurring him on.

Afterwards they regard each other not in shocked silence, but with the bright, wicked awareness of a shared jest. 

** 

They take turns preparing the evening meal. 

Brienne is a stoic cook, practical and largely uninterested in taste; Jaime likes to experiment with herbs and flavour. 

They manage not to poison themselves. 

**

And every evening, they retire to their firelit chamber and the four-poster bed. 

Brienne had found a thick, luxurious sable fur in one of the storerooms, and had lost herself in stroking it, in the feel of it against her skin; she’d lain it across their bed, giving Jaime a challenging look – but he’d only laughed. 

They put it to good use. 

She does not like to be naked in the light of day, but has become more comfortable in candle- and firelight. In his more playful moods, Jaime refuses to take off all his clothes if she doesn’t return the favour, and Brienne likes to look on her golden husband very much.

And so she’s sprawled bare and defenceless on the thick black fur, Jaime kneeling between her thighs, his soft lips and his rasping tongue wringing hoarse, gasping sobs from her, her body rising to his every command. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs, his voice low and dark and amused, “just like that. Don’t hold back – I want to see you come again and again, wife.”

He’s so beautiful in the mingled shadow and firelight, his body warm and sweat-slick, and she can feel his leashed and coiled strength; a wild, dangerous lion, hers, all hers, bound by the thinnest of chains – 

Again and again, pleasure drags her under like a great, crashing wave, until she finally uncurls and lies back against the furs, half-gasping for air. 

He’s lying beside her now, his fingers tracing patterns between the freckles on her breasts. Even as she watches, still panting, his eyes flick up to hers and he takes one of her nipples into his mouth, his teeth very white. She’s still shivering and shuddering with aftershocks, but when he swirls his tongue and suckles her, a bolt of sensation scrapes across her nerves like a knife, almost too sharp; she hisses, curling inwards, and grips his arm with bruising force.

“Too much?” he asks, releasing her nipple and breathing across it, a stream of cool air that makes her shudder. 

She stares at him. His eyes gleam in the firelight, filled with a laughing challenge. 

“Go on,” she says, deliberately stretching, letting her legs fall open. “I can take it.” Just as deliberately, she lifts her left hand over her head, palm up, so that the crimson scrap of his favour shows very red against her white skin and the black fur. 

His eyes narrow and darken with hunger, and she laughs in wicked delight as her wild, reckless, hot-blooded husband loses all restraint and pounces on her, growling. 

**


	14. Applegarth III - the Village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interspersed between talk of cows and grain and the likelihood of rain, Jaime and Brienne begin to hear garbled scraps of news from the outside world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is that plot I see on the horizon?

The long, lazy days continue. 

In their shared idyll, Brienne and Jaime grow closer and ever closer, their lives twining about each other like the climbing roses that adorn their solitary bower.

When she tells him the tale behind her aversion to roses, he makes a low scoffing sound, and that night scatters sweet-smelling petals on their bed, velvet soft shells of crimson and gold and pale ivory. 

“Connington was a cunt,” he says, sprawling lazily amongst the furs and the rose petals. “All your former betrotheds were cunts.”

“Even the boy who died?” 

“Yes, even him. But no matter. I’m much better than any of them.” 

“Certainly better than old Ser Humphrey,” she agrees, running a blood-red petal through her fingers, stroking its softness over her cheek. “He must have been three-score years old, but I challenged him to a duel and broke his bones.” 

He only laughs, slips a hand around her waist and coaxes her to lie down with him amongst the roses. 

** 

One day they ride – Jaime on a leading rein, to which he objects indignantly – down to the nearest village, a tiny hamlet of no more than fifty smallfolk. It’s market day, and there’s a certain hustle and bustle in the air; farmers shout their wares and villagers stroll about in their best clothes. This far into the backwoods of the Riverlands, the war has yet to make a serious impact; still, the intrusion of two strangers on horseback – one armed, the other in chains – is enough to draw notice. 

Jaime’s hair is gold and curling, his beauty striking. Brienne is equally noticeable, albeit for the opposite reason. She holds her head high, ignoring the hushed whispers.

But before she can take it to heart, the sound of the blacksmith’s hammer draws her attention. She guides their horses over to the forge, with some idea of having Jaime’s chains struck off – but the blacksmith takes one look at Jaime’s crimson tunic, his golden hair and green eyes, and spits on the ground with unmistakable contempt. 

“Well,” Jaime says, with a sardonic grin. “So much for that.” 

“You can’t stay in chains forever,” she says. “Your wrists –”

“Will not fall off.” He shrugs. “But if you’ve a mind to play ministering angel –”

She makes a scoffing noise. Nevertheless, she buys linen bandages and salve from an old herb-woman in the market. 

Jaime takes one whiff and wrinkles his nose in revulsion. 

“Oh, don’t be such a – a Lannister,” she hisses under her breath.

He only laughs. 

Finally they duck into the tiny ale-house and order food and wine. The smallfolk eye them warily at first, the conversation level dropping, but when they do nothing more startling than eat and drink, eventually the other patrons turn back to their own conversations.

As always, they talk of the weather and the crops and their animals, of their neighbours and their own concerns. But interspersed between talk of cows and grain and the likelihood of rain, Jaime and Brienne begin to hear garbled scraps of news from the outside world.

“The Young Wolf has taken the Crag, and returned to Riverrun with a fair maiden to wife. And him promised to one of old Walder Frey’s daughters!” one villager says. 

“Well, well, I can’t say as I blame him,” says another, laughing. 

A wagoner from two villages over announces that the old Hand’s daughter, the Young Wolf’s beautiful sister held captive in King’s Landing, had been married to the Imp. 

“And her no more than a maid, barely flowered.” A young farmwife shakes her head, her eyes gleaming. “Just think what that lecherous monster will do to her.” 

Jaime’s mouth tightens. 

When talk turns to the brutish Maid of Tarth – _Brienne the Beauty, they call her_ – taking the beautiful Kingslayer to husband by force – _they say the Queen screamed and raged when she heard!_ – Brienne drains the last of her wine and they make a hasty departure. 

“People talk,” Jaime says, when they’ve left the village behind. “The more lurid and scandalous the gossip, the wider it spreads.”

She hunches unhappily in the saddle. It’s an old, old defensive habit, and she forces herself to straighten up. “You heard what they said in there.” 

“I heard a bunch of ignorant peasants repeating thrice-told tales.” Jaime makes a dismissive gesture. “We’re no more real to them than Aemon the Dragonknight or Symeon Star-Eyes.”

“I wanted to be a knight, like in the old tales,” she says. “But not like this.” 

Not the Maid of Tarth, who stole Queen Cersei’s brother-lover away and kept him for her own. Not Brienne the Beauty, famed for her great strength and ugliness. 

“When Robert first named me Kingslayer,” Jaime finally says, “the name – and the tale – spread from the Red Keep to King’s Landing and all throughout the Seven Kingdoms. That was half a lifetime ago.” He looks over to Brienne. “You get used to it.”

They ride on in silence, back to the solitude of their keep. 

** 

Some days later a raven arrives, summoning them back to Riverrun. 

“Lord Edmure is to marry the Frey girl in King Robb’s place,” Brienne says.


	15. The Red Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tywin Lannister sends his regards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue - from their arrival at the Twins, and their audience with Lord Walder - is borrowed directly from the books. Because I can't top that.

The atmosphere at Riverrun has changed. 

Brienne can’t put her finger on it; there’s a strange air of resentment and impatience, a feeling of disillusionment. The young Queen and her Westerling kin are resented and mistrusted; Lord Karstark is dead, executed for murdering a Lannister hostage, and he had cursed King Robb with his last breath.

“The Young Wolf won every battle, but lost the war in the marriage bed,” Jaime says lazily. “Just watch. He’s lost Winterfell, and now even his loyal bannermen will turn against him.”

He seems supremely unconcerned by the prospect of King Robb’s fall. But Brienne has seen the looks cast his way by the Stark loyalists. She stays as close to his side as she can, and when she has to leave him alone she makes sure to bar the door to their chamber. 

“I don’t like this wedding,” she breathes into Jaime’s skin late at night, whispering secrets in the firelit darkness. “I don’t trust Walder Frey.”

He trails his fingers across her palm, twines their hands together. 

“No one trusts him,” he says. “But they deal with him, all the same.”

“I think we should be on our guard,” she whispers. “I think –” she sits up, disentangles herself from him and pads over to the stand where her armour and weapons hang. 

“Here,” she says, returning to the bed with a sheathed dagger. “Take this.” 

He looks down at the dagger. His hands – still chained, but with bandages now wrapped around his wrists – reach out to accept it from her, gently, as reverently as if she were presenting him with a Valyrian steel sword. 

When his fingers close over the hilt, he draws in a long breath. The ring of steel sliding from the sheath is loud in the hushed silence; he stares at the blade for a moment, blinking, and then sheathes it with a sigh. 

“You’ll need to keep it secret,” she warns him. “But if anything should happen, I’d prefer you were armed.” 

“Brienne,” he says abruptly. He looks up at her, his eyes unwontedly solemn. “Thank you.” He lays the dagger down and reaches up to frame her face with his hands, presses a gentle kiss to her brow. 

Her hand steals up to clasp his, and they stare at each other, wide-eyed. 

“Whatever happens,” she whispers, “we’ll face it together.”

** 

It’s a long and tiring journey from Riverrun to the Twins. Constant rain and swollen rivers delay them, and everyone is tired and on edge; Lord Edmure is a reluctant bridegroom, petulantly hoping that his bride is at least comely, and King Robb is clearly impatient and eager to put the whole matter behind him. 

From what Brienne can tell, he has some plan for an ambitious campaign after the wedding. But now that Brienne is married to the Kingslayer, she is no longer included in the Young Wolf’s war councils; once Lord Walder’s bruised pride is appeased, she – and Jaime – are to go with Lady Catelyn to Seagard, out of sight and out of mind. 

“A charming prospect,” Jaime says sardonically. “Packed off like unwanted afterthoughts, all three of us.”

Jaime – wet, miserable, and not pleased at once more being put on a leading rein – has kept up a caustic commentary on the roads, the weather and their fellow travellers all the way from Riverrun. Brienne mostly lets it wash over her; he no longer reserves his worst comments for her, and by now she’s even come to enjoy his biting wit. 

When King Robb and his beautiful young wife had exchanged lengthy and passionate farewells not once, not twice, but thrice, Brienne had coughed and averted her eyes, and then made the mistake of looking at Jaime – 

“The Twins!” the call comes from up ahead, and the whole party breathes a sigh of relief. 

** 

Before they pass through the gates and into the castle proper, Lady Catelyn advises them to make a point of partaking of Lord Walder’s hospitality. 

“Once you have eaten of his bread and salt, you have the guest right, and the laws of hospitality protect you beneath his roof.” 

“I have an army to protect me, Mother,” King Robb says. “I don’t need to trust in bread and salt.”

But the army remains outside the walls of the castle, camped on the grounds surrounding the river. The king’s great direwolf protector, Grey Wind, also remains outside. 

The Freys are allies, of course, if slighted ones; still, they need only endure this wedding and the balance will be restored. 

Old Lord Walder is all of ninety years old, steeped in malice and lechery and greed. He sits on his high seat like a malevolent vulture, insulting the king and Lord Edmure with leering impunity, holding his grievance over their heads and rejoicing in his control of the situation. 

“And where’s your bride, your grace? The fair Queen Jeyne. Fairer than my own get, eh? Elsewise how could her face and form have made the King’s Grace forget his solemn promise.”

Kind Robb endures it, smiling politely and apologising to Lord Walder’s slighted daughters, granddaughters and even a few great-granddaughters. 

From the glint in Jaime’s eyes, he’s enjoying this immensely. 

And then finally Roslin Frey is brought forth, and the expression of relief on Lord Edmure’s face is enough to make Brienne roll her own eyes. 

Finally, after what seems like forever, they come to the end of the audience. 

The old lord still has yet to offer them food or drink – it falls to Lady Catelyn to request it. 

“Of course, of course,” the old man says. “Bread and salt.” He claps his hands, and servants come out bearing flagons of wine and trays of bread, cheese and butter. They all eat and drink, even Jaime, and lord Walder says “My honoured guests. Be welcome beneath my roof, and at my table.” 

And so it was done. 

** 

Afterwards, when Brienne and her smirking husband have been allotted a chamber of their own, Brienne throws herself down across the bed and breathes a sigh of relief. 

“Gods above, I’m glad that’s over,” she says. “I can’t wait to be rid of this place.” 

“Two more days,” Jaime says. “And then we’ll be off to Seagard, I suppose.” He lies down beside her. “I can’t say I won’t be happy to see the back of Riverrun.” But he makes a face. “At this rate I’ll never get back to King’s Landing.” 

Just for a moment, she freezes. “Is that what you want?” 

He sighs. “I want to see my family. I want to be among my own people, not Northerners who despise me.” He rolls over to face her. “Is that so much to ask?”

It’s such a simple thing. And yet, for Lord Tywin’s son and heir, for the Queen’s brother-lover, for King Robb’s most valuable hostage, it’s impossible. 

She puts her hand on his cheek, feels the rasp of his golden stubble. “I’m sorry,” she whispers against his mouth. “I wish it could be otherwise.”

He smiles into the kiss. “No, you don’t,” he says. 

** 

The drums are pounding, pounding, pounding, and Brienne’s head pounds with them. It’s hot and stifling inside the great hall, and the minstrels’ playing is far too loud and horribly out of tune; she thinks she can identify some songs, but the noise in the great hall almost overwhelms the music. 

The mead and ale and wine flow freely, and the guests are roaring drunk. Laughter and shouting ring out, and toasts are drunk to the bride and groom, to the King in the North, to anything and everything. Some of the revellers are dancing, others wrestling, while others still try their luck with the cold, unappetising food. 

Outside it’s raining still, but the soldiers have a feast of their own, with the drink flowing just as freely. It’s a merry night, sure to end in drunkenness and debauchery, with sore and sorry heads come the morning. 

Jaime sits in a rich crimson tunic, silent and proud, and watches it all with a sardonic eye. He’s not had more than two cups of wine; _I’m not a drinker,_ he’d told her once. _That’s not my vice._ After her last experience with wine at the victory feast after Oxcross, Brienne, too, has learned to be cautious. Besides, there’s always some danger when men are in their cups. It’s best to stay alert, just in case. 

The guests’ swordbelts and weapons are hanging on pegs on the walls, but Jaime still has his concealed dagger. 

When the call for the bedding goes up, the minstrels strike up a bawdy tune and the Greatjon rushes forward and throws the bride over his shoulder, carrying her away to the bridal chamber amidst raucous cheering and lewd banter. The women descend on Lord Edmure and bear him off with gales of shrieking laughter. 

Jaime’s smile is fixed, his eyes glittering and his hand clenched on his knife. Brienne puts her hand over his in silent warning. 

It’s then that she feels him tense, feels the sudden alertness – 

“What is it?” she asks, a cold chill crawling down her spine. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “Something’s wrong.” 

She looks around frantically, seeing only dancing and laughter and merrymaking. And then from the corner of her eye, she sees a man hurrying to the great doors and barring them from the inside before sneaking away, looking this way and that. 

She gets to her feet in alarm.

But then she hears it. From the lively, bawdy songs for the bedding, the minstrels transition into a low, haunting tune, ominous and spine-chilling – 

“No!” she shouts, her hand going to her waist – but of course she’s unarmed, her swordbelt hanging on the wall. 

For one terrible, heartstopping moment, as _The Rains of Castamere_ echoes throughout the hall, she turns back to Jaime. 

“Did you know of this?” she breathes. 

“No,” he says. “Gods, no, Brienne – I would never –”

Crossbow bolts rain down from above, slamming into King Robb, into the Greatjon, into the drunken, confused Northmen. Lady Catelyn screams, and resistance breaks out as some of the guests begin to fight back, but it’s too little, too late – 

Some of the killers are Bolton men, she sees with a horrible sense of disbelief. 

Brienne cries out in denial and goes to throw herself into the fray, thinking to take as many of them as she can before they kill her, but Jaime knocks her down from behind and drags her into a darkened corner. “Stay down, you fool!” he hisses. “Do you want to die?” 

“Damn you, let me go!” she snarls. “I have to protect them!” 

She tries to struggle to her feet but he holds her down. “Listen, damn you,” he whispers furiously. “Just listen!” At first she can’t hear anything over the pounding of the drums and the triumphant crescendo of Lord Tywin’s great victory song, but then she hears shouting and screaming and the clash of swords from outside, and the howling and snarling of the great direwolf, abruptly cut off. 

“The Starks are finished,” Jaime says. “But you and I might just survive this, if we’re lucky and we keep our heads down.” 

“I swore an oath!” she cries out in anguish, as King Robb staggers to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth, as one of Lord Walder’s sons slits Lady Catelyn’s throat from ear to ear. 

“I know,” he says. “I know.” And he holds her close, his arms tight around her, as she weeps. 

She doesn’t remember much after that. The terrible song seems to go on forever, and men scream and shout as they die, murdered in violation of the sacred laws of guest right. 

A Frey soldier charges towards them, his sword dripping blood, but Jaime tangles the blade in his chains and wrenches it away. They grapple for a few moments before Jaime draws his concealed dagger and slits his throat, blood spraying over his crimson finery; others come, and Jaime places himself squarely before Brienne and kills them all, one by one by one.

Finally, when the music stops and the great hall is silent save for the moans and cries of dying men, Roose Bolton walks over to Jaime, his sword bloody, his face calm and even pleased. 

“Ser Jaime,” he says. “Your father sends his regards.”

“Yes,” Jaime replies, looking around at the ruin of so many lives and hopes. “I rather thought so.”


	16. The Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What are you doing?” he asks, late one night. 
> 
> “Dying,” she says.

The next few days are a blur. 

She’s present, but not; awake but not truly aware; she feels as though she’s gone away a little, inside. Instead of the Rains of Castamere, all she can hear is the hiss and drag of the waves beneath Evenfall Hall; instead of King Robb’s and Lady Catelyn’s deaths, all she can see is the overgrown gardens of Applegarth, the hazy stillness and golden light of dawn, and Jaime turned towards her but drawing farther and farther away. 

When Lord Walder’s maester gives her milk of the poppy, it gets worse. 

She’s vaguely aware that she’s riding behind Jaime, slumped full against his back with her hands looped around his waist. But she’s lost in lurid fever-dreams where she’s the one in chains, at his mercy, or nightmares of Renly’s half-forgotten face morphing into Lady Catelyn’s and then into Jaime’s as he dies in her arms. 

_Jaime,_ she mumbles against his neck, pressing as close against him as she can. _Jaime, please –_

At night, he pulls her into his arms and holds her as she mumbles his name over and over again. She’s so cold. So cold inside, and shaking with it; not even Jaime’s heavy crimson wool cloak wrapped around her, his arms holding her tightly, are enough to warm her, or to keep her from flying apart.

“What are you doing?” he asks, late one night, as the stars wheel diamond-bright above. 

“Dying,” she says. “I should have died with the rest of them.”

He’s silent for a few moments. And then he gives her a little shake. “This is the world,” he says softly. “It’s not like the songs. In real life, kings are bloody tyrants and knights are iron-fisted murderers. Honour can be bought, and oaths broken on a whim. And all we can rely on,” he says, pressing the slim dagger she had given him into her right hand, “is this.” 

Brienne’s hand clenches on the leather sheath, her fingers brushing his. 

“I will kill them,” she whispers, a slow, burning purpose crystallising in her mind. It’s the first moment of clarity she’s had in days.

“Good.” Jaime gathers her close against him, wrapping his cloak around her. “Live,” he says. “Live, and take your revenge.”

** 

But the poppy pulls her under for what seems like forever, and the next time she's truly awake and aware she’s on a boat, headed out to sea. The canvas sail snaps in the wind, the rigging humming with familiar tension; the breeze is brisk and salt-tinged, and the distant island on the horizon is achingly familiar. 

“My lady,” the captain says, bowing. “Welcome back.” It’s the same man who took her from Tarth to the mainland, long months ago. 

She’s wearing her sword and her old, familiar armour, her azure and rose surcoat and her old blue cloak. There’s no sign of the crimson wool cloak, nor anything to show that she is anything other than Brienne of Tarth, the same hulking girl-woman who had left her homeland so long ago, chasing dreams of honour and glory. 

Nothing, save for a thin, faded scrap of fabric tied around her wrist.


	17. King's Landing 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime returns to King's Landing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning, if you need it, for J/C in the Sept of Baelor. 
> 
> Also, I have taken quite a a few lines of dialogue from ASOS.

“Uncle!” King Tommen cries from the Iron Throne, a wide smile on his chubby face.

Jaime walks the long hallway of the throne room, head held high, still wearing his blood-spattered and road-worn wedding finery. The courtiers murmur amongst themselves, low whispering and speculation. When he reaches the foot of the throne, he makes his bow.

“You,” his father says, from his seat at the King’s right hand.

“Me,” Jaime agrees. He turns to Cersei, at the King’s left hand. “Sweet sister. I have returned.”

She shoots him a cool, haughty look. “You’re late, brother.”

“We are pleased to see you back, uncle,” King Tommen says, oblivious. He, at least, seems pleased to see Jaime – such a sweet boy, he and Cersei had made together. He’d best learn to grow claws.

They mouth pleasantries for the court, a necessary mummer’s farce, until Tommen graciously dismisses Jaime and he makes his escape.

**

His place in the Kingsguard has been taken by Ser Loras Tyrell. His quarters, at least, have not; he has just enough time to wash off the dirt of the Kingsroad – and scrub the last of the blood from his hands – before he is summoned to the Tower of the Hand.

His father sits behind his great desk, in the position of power as always, scratching away with his quill. Cersei stands to the side, fierce in crimson and gold. Her hair is radiant in the sunlight streaming through the narrow windows; as always, she is the most beautiful woman he’s ever known.

And the cruellest.

“And so you’re back,” his father says, looking up from his papers. “And not before time. The world has moved on while you were languishing in captivity.” 

“So I hear,” Jaime agrees. His father has yet to offer him a seat, but Jaime sits down anyway.

“It’s time to stop playing with swords and start taking up your responsibilities. I’ve found you a suitable wife; once you’re wed you’ll go to Casterly Rock and take the Westerlands in hand.”

“Oh?” Jaime glances at Cersei. “And who is this ‘suitable’ wife? You forget, Father, that I am already wed.”

Cersei’s eyes narrow dangerously. Her fingers twist into claws. Jaime imagines the furrows she would leave in his back, if he were to throw up her skirts and try to fuck the rage and jealousy out of her. 

“The High Septon has decreed that vows made while intoxicated and under threat of coercion are null and void. You were never truly married to that woman.”

“How much did you pay him?” It slips out before he can stop himself; his father merely glowers at him.

“Still. It would have been better if you had let the Freys kill her. Instead you foolishly risked your life for nothing, and the smallfolk talk of nothing else but your defending her.”

It takes a moment before Jaime understands his father’s meaning – and a moment before he can trust himself not to react.

But he is a Lannister. He knows how to lie.

He puts on his best sardonic smile. “If the Freys had thought to explain themselves before coming at me with their swords drawn, I might have stopped to listen. As it was, I thought they were trying to kill me.”

“You never _think_ , Jaime!” His father snaps, slapping the wooden desk with his hand. “You’re my son. Do you imagine I would have risked the slightest harm to you?”

Jaime draws in his breath. _I think they were too drunk and maddened with blood to care,_ he wants to say. And _You forget – you have two sons, Father_.

Instead, all he says is: “Well, we are rid of the great beast now. The Young Wolf’s defeat broke her; I sent her back to her father and bade him keep her silent and out of trouble.”

Still, his father frowns. “Once you are wed to Sansa Stark, the rumours will cease. I will make sure of it.” 

Jaime’s heart sinks.

“Sansa Stark?” he raises his brows. “I thought she was wed to Tyrion.” He makes a show of looking around. “Where is he, by the way?”

His father merely stares at him. But Cersei is ever-quick to rise to the bait. “My son is dead,” she hisses. “And that twisted little monster you love so much killed him.”

“Did he?” Jaime considers his sister. Her eyes are bright with grief and – he could only call it _hatred_. He had heard many things on the road back to King’s Landing – of Joffrey’s cruelties and excesses, and Tyrion’s attempts to manage him; of Joffrey’s death, and Tyrion’s trial. “Why?”

“He warned me,” Cersei says. “One day when I thought myself safe and happy he would turn my joy to ashes in my mouth, he said. Joff knew – he _pointed_ at Tyrion before he died.”

“Enough,” his father decrees. “Tyrion has chosen trial by combat. The gods will determine his guilt or innocence.”

“If he can find anyone willing to fight Gregor Clegane,” Cersei says, with a slow, cruel smile.

_Of course._

“Perhaps I will be his champion,” Jaime muses.

Cersei’s smile vanishes. His father merely raises his brows and takes up his quill. “Don’t be a fool, Jaime,” is all he says. And then: “Well? Go, both of you.”

He turns back to his papers.

**

Jaime accompanies Cersei to the Sept of Baelor, where Joffrey’s body is laid out in state.

“Tyrion killed him, Jaime,” Cersei says. Tears glimmer in her eyes, and she turns to him, her face very white. She takes his hand in hers, kisses his fingers. “I was not complete without you,” she whispers. “I was afraid the Starks would send me your head. I could not have borne that.”

She is every bit as beautiful as he remembers. Her waist is slim and supple, her hair like cool silk, and her perfume is intoxicating. For a moment, he remembers the hatred in her eyes and the cruelty of her smile, but the dark tide of his life-long love drags him under, and Jaime surrenders.

They fuck on the altar of the Mother. He loses himself in her flesh, drowning in the taste and scent of her as always; he feels her heart beating in time with his own.

He strokes his thumb over her left wrist, seeking out –

Afterwards, she whispers: “Tell me you’ll kill our little brother? Promise me you’ll avenge our son.”

**

He feels – nothing.

For a moment, after Cersei had said – what she had said – he’d felt _her_ eyes on him – but it had only been the statue of the Maiden, her inlaid sapphire eyes dark and lifeless in comparison.

**

Tyrion at least is glad to see him. “Do it, you son of a poxy whore,” he says, as the heavy door to his cell swings open.

“Is that any way to speak about our lady mother?” Jaime asks.

“You?” His little brother blinks up at him, eyes wide in the flickering torchlight. His mouth trembles.

“Me,” Jaime says, with a little smile. And then he frowns. “What happened to your nose?”

Tyrion laughs hoarsely. “They made me fight a battle without my big brother to protect me.”

“A better attempt at war than my own.” Jaime lowers the torch and slides down to sit on the straw-strewn floor.

They stare at each other in silence for a few moments.

“What are you doing here, Jaime?” Tyrion asks eventually. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a kingslayer too, now.”

“Tyrion,” Jaime sighs. “You’re my brother. When you were no more than a babe in our mother’s belly, I promised to protect you.”

He had kept that vow, at least. Save for that one, terrible lie.

Tyrion swallows and looks away. “Can you protect me from our father and sister?”

_Tell me you’ll kill our little brother?_

“Even better,” Jaime says, deliberately light. “I will kill the Mountain for you.”

Tyrion barks out a laugh. “Just like that?”

“Of course. Can you doubt me? I am the best swordsman in Westeros. Well.” He considers this. “Perhaps there is one better.” 

“Yes,” Tyrion says slowly. “Yes, I’ve heard all about the Maid of Tarth. Father was livid. Not because of the marriage, mind you – but because of the manner of it.”

Jaime laughs softly, rests his head against the stone wall. “Of course.”

“Whatever happened to your bride?” Tyrion asks. “I heard she was even uglier than me.”

Jaime swallows. “She is no longer my bride. Haven’t you heard? Vows made in wine and at spear-point don’t count. The High Septon says so.”

Tyrion eyes him skeptically.

“She means nothing to me.”

“Jaime.” Tyrion sighs and shakes his head. “You’re a horrible liar.”

“Nevertheless.” Jaime smiles. “I deny her. I have returned to the loving welcome of my family –” Tyrion snorts “– the loving welcome, I say – and I mean to put the whole wretched business behind me.” He leans forward, takes his brother’s hand. “But I have no intention of marrying your widow, Tyrion. I’m afraid you’ll have to fulfil Father’s plans for the North yourself.” 

Tyrion grips his hand convulsively.

“I promise, brother,” Jaime says. “Trust me.”

“Brother mine,” Tyrion says hoarsely. “When you say it like that, I almost believe you.”


	18. Interlude - Tarth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Tarth, Brienne regathers her strength - and comes to a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to all who have waited patiently for this update. Please enjoy :-)

The long, winding trail up to Evenfall Hall is as familiar to her as her own hand.

The heavy iron-barred gates and pale stone walls of her home have not changed. The guards salute her as she rides in, and Shem the stable master takes her horse as he has always done, with a smile and a quick bow of his head.

Nothing has changed. And yet it seems – smaller, somehow, or perhaps it is she who has grown larger.

**

“Oh, my daughter,” her father says, engulfing her in his embrace. “You have returned safely.”

He is tall and strong as ever, and as always smells of leather and steel and salt wind. His blue eyes are warm and shrewd, and filled with joy.

“Forgive me, Father,” she whispers. She feels – desolate. Empty. “I failed.”

“No.” He puts his hands on her shoulders. “No, Brienne. You survived."

**

She can’t sleep.

Her bed is too cold, and she misses the warmth of another body beside her. She misses the sound of his breathing in the night, the weight of his arm around her waist, the feel of him inside her.

She misses their late night conversations, the secrets that he would sometimes whisper in the firelit darkness.

_I am his,_ she had said, _and he is mine_. There had been a time, in the gardens of Applegarth, when she had thought him the one person in all the world she could call her own.

But they had been wed at sword- and spear-point. Their marriage had not been of his choosing.

She’d had no right to claim him.

**

And yet –

Even before their marriage, he had bound a crimson claim around her wrist.

**

In the morning, she makes her way to the practice yard. She picks up a sword for the first time since – _since_ – and slowly walks out onto the packed earth, the weight of steel achingly familiar in her hand.

“Well, you’ve gone out into the world, now, girl,” Ser Goodwin says. The master-at-arms is older than she remembers, his beard streaked with grey and his eyes lined with age. “And you’ve seen how cruel it is for yourself. The question is – what are you going to do now?”

_Live,_ Jaime’s voice whispers in her ear.

She clenches her fist on her sword hilt.

“Well, well, so the spirit’s not been entirely knocked out of you.” Ser Goodwin nods approvingly. “Let’s see what you’ve learned.”

They spar.

“Good,” Ser Goodwin says, as he puts her through her paces. And: “You’ve been sparring with Northmen, I see. Bashing and battering. Well, you’ve the strength for it.” And: “Who taught you _that_?”

She pauses, gasping for breath, sweat trickling down her face and darkening her tunic. Thinks over the sequence of blows, and remembers Jaime laughing after he’d knocked her to the ground –

“Quicker than you, is he? Reckless, impatient and damned careless.”

Brienne blinks at him.

“I’ve seen the Kingslayer at tourneys, once or twice. That one fights like a roaring lion, throwing himself in without thinking – don’t you start picking up his bad habits.”

Despite herself, Brienne laughs. “I won’t,” she says obediently.

“Good. You’ve a calm head, girl, and a steady hand. _Think_ before you throw yourself into trouble.”

**

If she’d had such a calm head and a steady hand, she would never have thrown herself at him in the Whispering Wood.

If she’d thought at all instead of giving in to hot-blooded madness, they would never have fucked in the armoury, or in her tent after the battle, or in any of the other places where they’d fallen on each other like – like roaring lions.

If she were such a creature of common sense and caution, she would never have looked on his golden beauty and _wanted_ him for her own.

**

Her father shows her Jaime’s raven, received a few days after what the singers now call the Red Wedding.

_I return your daughter to you unharmed_ , the scrawling handwriting says, _and will forward ten thousand gold dragons for my ransom. She has no further claim on me. Keep her on your island and out of trouble, if you can._

“The gold has arrived, as promised,” her father says. His eyes stray to a number of heavy iron-bound chests stacked against the wall of his study, each embossed with an ornate snarling lion’s head. “Along with a message from Lord Tywin, advising that your marriage has been annulled - and sending his regards.”

Brienne’s blood runs cold. Her hands begin to shake, and she clenches her fists, tears welling in her eyes.

“Blood money,” she whispers.

“No doubt.” Her father takes her hands in his. “Daughter. These are dangerous waters. But whatever you wish to do, I will support you. Even if it means standing against all the might of Casterly Rock.”

_Live,_ she hears a distant whisper. She feels him press a dagger into her palm. _Live, and take your revenge._

**

_Think_ , Ser Goodwin might have said.

But Brienne is past thinking.

She had taken him prisoner in the Whispering Wood. He is _hers_ to keep _._

So long as the crimson favour holds, so long as the unspoken promise between them still stands –

She will not let him go until _she_ is ready.

She is a lioness, now, and the whole world will hear her roar.


	19. King's Landing II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Little brother,” Jaime sighs. He kneels down, his mail clinking, so that he and Tyrion are eye to eye. “If I should die –”
> 
> Tyrion looks stricken. “Jaime –”
> 
> “If I should die,” he repeats insistently – hesitates, and then shrugs. “Well. I don’t suppose it’s much of a secret any more. Tell Brienne not to weep _too_ much for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I have borrowed quite a bit of material directly from the books.

“If you insist on this madness, then take this,” his father says, holding out an ornate sword with a snarling lion’s-head pommel.

Jaime raises his brows, accepts the sword with a slight nod. It’s lighter than he expects. Curious, he draws the blade partway from the sheath, hissing as he sees the characteristic ripples in the steel.

“This is Valyrian steel. Where did you –”

“I had Ned Stark’s great-sword melted down,” his father says curtly. “There was enough material for two blades – Joffrey had the other.”

Jaime knows of his father’s long search for a Valyrian steel blade to replace the long-lost Brightroar. His offers to buy ancestral blades from impoverished houses had been rebuffed; evidently he had found another way to take what he wanted.

No matter its origins, the blade is magnificent. Perfectly weighted, it could have been made for his hand.

“Thank you, Father,” he says solemnly.

“You can thank me by not throwing your life away championing your fool of a brother.”

 _A curious dilemma, Father_. _Do you save your eldest son by ordering your mad dog to lose, thus also sparing your younger? Or is your hatred of Tyrion so great that you would sacrifice me as well?_

_Can Clegane even be bought?_

“I swore to protect him,” he says, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

“Oaths are made to be broken,” his father says. “Sacred vows can be absolved with the stroke of a king’s pen. Children disinherited. Wives set aside and marriages unmade. You should know that by now.”

**

He leaves his father’s tower in a foul temper, strides into the practice yard to find Ser Loras Tyrell, two or three other knights of the Reach gathered about him.

“Ser Jaime,” the Knight of Flowers says stiffly. The other knights echo him, their voices faintly mocking.

Jaime ignores the hangers-on and looks at Ser Loras. He’s dressed all in white and gold, his hair a soft brown tumble. A beautiful youth; all of 17 years old. Looking on him makes Jaime feel old.

“Ser Loras,” he says pleasantly. “May your white cloak and your vows bring you lifelong joy.”

Even as he speaks, Jaime is fully aware of his own hypocrisy.

“I thank you ser,” the boy says with simple dignity. “But there will be no more joy in my life. When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.”

Jaime only sighs. “Yes, yes, I’m sure Renly was worth all your life’s devotion and more. But tell me this, at least,” he says. “Why did Brienne of Tarth leave your beloved Renly’s army to join the Starks?”

Ser Loras hesitates. One of the other knights lets out a braying laugh. “Brienne the Beauty?” he asks. “So the tales are true, then?”

“And what tales are those, pray?” he asks, smiling with all his teeth.

“They say she kept you in chains for her own amusement,” another knight guffaws loudly. “I don’t wonder at your eagerness to escape her, Ser Jaime.”

“No, no, Bushy,” the first one says. “We must congratulate Ser Jaime on attaining the unattainable. If old Tarly hadn’t seized the winnings, ser, you might have claimed the entire pot.”

“Gentlemen!” Ser Loras says, reprovingly. “That is hardly –”

Jaime’s hands clench into fists. “Go on,” he drawls, his voice perfectly calm. “The pot?”

They tell him about their bet, laughing heartily all the while.

Jaime smashes his fist into the first one’s face, sending him to his knees, grabs his collar and punches him again, until his mouth is a red ruin.

The other stares at him in blank incomprehension. “Ser Jaime,” he gasps faintly, “what…?”

Jaime grabs him by the scruff of his neck and rams his head against a brick wall, hearing a profoundly satisfying crunch.

“You are speaking of a highborn lady, gentlemen,” he says. “Call her by her name. Call her Lady Brienne.”

**

Curiously upset and angry on Brienne’s behalf, he finds his footsteps returning him to White Sword Tower. It’s no longer his home – his quarters had been moved into the Keep proper, as befitted the heir to Casterly Rock – but he knows every step, every crack in the white-washed brick walls.

He winds his way up the spiralling stairs to the room at the very top of the tower, to the carved weirwood table and the White Book. He can’t resist one last look at his own entry:

 _Ser Jaime Lannister,_ he reads, in old Ser Gerold Hightower’s big, forceful hand. _Firstborn son of Lord Tywin and Lady Joanna of Casterly Rock. Served against the Kingswood Brotherhood. Knighted in his 15 th year by Ser Arthur Dayne of the Kingsguard, for valour in the field. Chosen for the Kingsguard in his 15th year by King Aerys II Targaryen. _

And then in Ser Barristan Selmy’s smaller and more elegant writing:

_During the Sack of King’s landing, slew King Aerys II at the foot of the Iron Throne. Thereafter known as the “Kingslayer”._

That was all. The sum total of his life, recorded for posterity.

 _Have you any other great deeds?_ She had asked.

Jaime sits alone at the table, eyes fixed on the almost-blank page. Suddenly he comes to a decision. He finds quill and ink in a drawer, and begins to write:

_Captured in the Whispering Wood by Brienne, the Maid of Tarth during the War of Five Kings. Released from the Kingsguard by order of King Joffrey I Baratheon. Held captive at Riverrun_

He hesitates for a moment, then, mouth set in a firm line:

_and wed by force to the Maid of Tarth._

There. It is forever recorded in the White Book, now.

_Returned to King’s Landing by Roose Bolton’s men after the Red Wedding._

He sits in silence for a long, long time, thinking, while the shadows grow long and evening closes in. Finally, he writes:

_Acted as champion for his brother Tyrion Lannister in trial by combat against Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides._

**

It’s night, by the time he returns to his chambers. Somehow he’s not surprised to find Cersei there, waiting for him.

She’s standing before the narrow window, the sea breeze swirling around her, flattening her white silk gown against her body.

“Jaime,” she says. “Brother. Please. Don’t throw your life away for our twisted little brother.” She steps closer to him, puts her hand on his arm. “I don’t know what I would do without you. I’m surrounded by enemies, and you are the only one I can count on.”

“Surrounded by enemies?” he asks. “What about Father?”

“He wants to send me to Casterly Rock, out of the way, so he’ll have a free hand with Tommen.”

He sighs, sinks down into a chair. It’s been a long day. “Tommen is the king.”

“He is a boy! A frightened little boy. Joff is dead and Myrcella’s in Dorne – Tommen is all I have left, Jaime. Please. You mustn’t let Father take him from me. He is _my_ son.” She pauses. “And yours.”

Jaime only laughs. “He is my seed. No more. None of them have ever called me Father.”

She kneels before him, her perfume strong and heady. Her long golden hair falls over her bare white shoulders, and her green eyes shimmer as she fights back tears.

“You’re my shining knight,” she whispers, taking his hand and kissing it. “You can’t abandon me. He is stealing my son, sending me away – and unless you stop him, Father is going to force me to wed again.”

Despite his weariness, the words strike him like a blow.

“Who?” he asks.

“Does it matter? I don’t care. I want to be _your_ wife, Jaime, we belong together – but it can never be.”

For so long, he had wanted nothing more than to call Cersei his wife. Again and again, he had urged her to damn the consequences and run away with him – and again and again she had refused, insisting that she must not lose her position, that she had her children to think of, that he was no more than a reckless fool, willing to count the world well lost for love.

But now –

He had called another woman _wife_ , once. Had lived with her openly.

If he’d gotten a child on Brienne, it would have called him Father.

“Jaime,” she whispers, “don’t you think I want it as much as you do? It makes no matter who they wed me to, I want you at my side. Nothing has changed between us. Let me prove it to you.”

She pushes up his tunic and fumbles at the laces of his breeches.

Suddenly he can’t bear it. “No,” he says, and pushes her away. “No, Cersei.” The words come tumbling out without thinking. “I have a wife already.” 

For an instant, he sees confusion in her bright green eyes. Then it’s replaced by rage. She straightens to her full height, shakes out her skirts. Her tears have vanished, as if they had never been. 

“I heard about what happened today,” she hisses. “You would prefer that great ugly beast to me? Have you lost your mind along with your manhood? She’s just like Tyrion – another freak who should have been drowned at birth! Well, once Tyrion is dead, I’ll make sure that _she’s_ next.”

Jaime’s blood runs cold. But he manages a thin smile. “I wonder, sister,” he says, “what will you do if I win tomorrow?”

Cersei sweeps out, slamming the door behind her.

**

The next morning dawns bright and clear.

Jaime makes his way to the yard where the trial by combat is to be held. A couple of young squires from the Westerlands help into his armour – not his golden armour, but leather and chainmail. Clegane is a brute of a man, taller and stronger than Jaime. His only chance is swift agility, darting in and out before his opponent can land a blow.

“My dear brother,” Tyrion’s voice hails him. “Good morrow. Will you take a cup of wine with me?” He holds up a goblet brimming with Arbor red. “They’ve let me out so I can witness my fate first-hand.”

Jaime frowns at him. “It’s not wise to drink before battle.”

“Well, _I_ need some wine, at least.” Tyrion drains the goblet in two long swallows. “Jaime,” he says, looking up at him seriously. “It’s not too late to reconsider.”

“Little brother,” Jaime sighs. He kneels down, his mail clinking, so that he and Tyrion are eye to eye. “If I should die –”

Tyrion looks stricken. “Jaime –”

“If I should die,” he repeats insistently – hesitates, and then shrugs. “Well. I don’t suppose it’s much of a secret any more. Tell Brienne not to weep _too_ much for me.” He grins, delighted by the thought of her glowering at him for dying so foolishly.

It almost looks as though Tyrion is blinking back tears. He flings his arms around Jaime’s shoulders and embraces him convulsively.

“Yes, yes,” Jaime says, patting him on the back. “I love you too.”

It looks as though a thousand people have come to watch the Kingslayer fight the Mountain. They line the castle walls and elbow one another on the steps of the keeps and the towers. There’s an atmosphere of excitement and expectation, as if this were no more than a tourney for their entertainment.

When Ser Gregor arrives, freakishly tall and strong, the onlookers murmur and call out in wonder and fear.

“Gods above,” Tyrion says. “How are you going to fight _that_?”

Jaime forces himself to smile. “Never you mind. Just sit back and watch. You can thank me later, after I win.”

Cersei, their father and their uncle Kevan are sitting on a platform erected on the edge of the yard. Their father glances once at Jaime and Tyrion, his expression unreadable, and then lifts his hand. The crowd grows quiet and expectant. The High Septon shuffles forward to intone a muffled prayer.

Jaime draws his sword, the ornate lion-hilted Valyrian steel sword that had been his father’s only sign of care, and examines the black-and-red ripples in the steel. He hasn’t named it yet; all the best swords should have names, shouldn’t they?

After the duel, he will think of a suitable name.

He spares a moment to think of Brienne.

And then the trumpets sound, and there’s no time to think of anything but survival.

**

 _Quick, quick, quick,_ Jaime thinks, _dance around him until he’s so tired he can hardly lift his arm, and then get him on his back._

It’s easier said than done. Clegane is hugely strong, his sword full six feet long, and if even one of his blows connects, Jaime is a dead man. He’s fought monsters before. He’d faced down the Smiling Knight, had held his own before Ser Arthur Dayne stepped in; Jaime has never lacked courage, only sense.

But this is madness. Clegane roars and charges at Jaime, swinging his sword like a vast axe, and sometimes it’s all Jaime can do to dodge; he darts and weaves, aiming for the gaps in the giant’s armour at knees and waist, elbows and under-arm.

He keeps the huge brute running, hoping against hope that he can wear him out, bring him down, put him on his back and finish him off.

This is not swordsmanship. It’s survival.

He can see Tyrion out of the corner of his eye, looking worried. He can see Cersei, and their father. He can see the crowd.

He can see – _Brienne?_

For a moment, he’s distracted, and he almost – almost – fails to duck in time; Clegane’s sword fetches him a glancing blow on the forehead, sends him flying to his knees, his head ringing and blood pouring into his eyes. He has just enough time to scramble up and block a strike that would have taken his head clean off; he staggers to his feet, weaving desperately, fending off a barrage of freakishly strong blows that threaten to overpower him.

He ducks, slips away, sees an opening and darts in, stabbing through the joints in Clegane’s armour. Clegane roars in pain and rears up. The crowd shriek and scream, and Jaime wipes away the blood and goes in again, striking for the gap beneath the giant’s arm. He feels his sword go home, buries it deep into Clegane’s armpit, triumphant, and thus misses the blow from his opponent’s huge, mailed fist.

It knocks him down, dazed, blinking stupidly upwards – he has just enough time to see the bright arc of the sword, raised against the blue, blue sky –

It comes down with a meaty _thunk_ , and Jaime _screams._

**

After that, there’s –

Searing pain. The crowd, roaring and screaming. Brienne’s blue, blue eyes, staring at him across the distance – _get up,_ she mouths. _Get up, and finish it!_

Somehow, he finds the strength to get up.

He finishes it.

And then he collapses to his knees, to his hands – his _hand!_ – and knows no more.

**


	20. King's Landing III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion sits vigil by Jaime’s bedside, willing him to live, searching for any spark of reason in those fever-glazed green eyes. On the second night, as Tyrion lies half-sleeping, he dreams of an unseen presence. 
> 
> “Jaime,” a low, female voice whispers. “Jaime, please. You must live.”

They carry Jaime into the grand maester’s chambers.

For long, terrible hours, Tyrion sits by his bedside as he tosses and turns with fever. His face is pale and drawn, and his right arm, bound in a sling upon his chest, is horribly shortened.

Jaime’s right hand is _gone_.

That hand had held the bridle of Tyrion’s first pony, as Jaime taught him to ride. Had clasped his shoulder, patted him on the back, had been held out, always, in acceptance – _you’re my brother, Tyrion, a Lion of the Rock._

Tyrion’s splendid, reckless, foolish older brother, who had taught him and protected him and loved him and accepted him just as he was.

_Trust me_ , Jaime had said.

He had saved Tyrion, just as he promised. But the cost had been –

Exhausted, elated, and just a little overwhelmed, Tyrion starts to laugh. _Look at us!_ He thinks hysterically. _Handless and Noseless, the Lannister brothers._

Somehow the laughter turns to choked sobs, and soon exhaustion and the sick remnants of adrenaline combine to drag him down into uneasy sleep.

**

Sometime during the long hours of the morning, when the fire has burned down to embers and the keep is silent and still, he becomes aware of another presence in the chamber. But his eyes are heavy, so heavy, and he retains only the haziest impression of the ghost of a scent – _lavender?_ – and the soft murmur of a low voice, whispering to Jaime.

**

For two days and nights this continues: Tyrion – now formally acquitted of regicide and kinslaying – sits vigil by Jaime’s bedside, willing him to _live_ , searching for any spark of reason in those fever-glazed green eyes.

But Jaime is lost and wandering in delirium.

_Cersei,_ he sighs, _you should have come away with me – we could have been happy, you and I._

_What would you have done?_ He spits out, angry and defiant. _Tell me that!_

_Tyrion_ , he whispers, almost pleading. _Tyrion, forgive me, I didn’t mean, I didn’t know – how could I have known –_

And then, once: _Come, sweetling_ with the ghost of a laugh. _May I have this dance?_

**

On the second night, as Tyrion lies half-sleeping, he dreams once more of the unseen presence.

“Jaime,” a low, female voice whispers. “Jaime, please. You must live.”

Tyrion hears Jaime stir, hears him laugh: low, hoarse and croaking, ending in a cough. “I’ll die if it pleases me,” he rasps out – even now, contrary and sardonic.

The presence – the woman – kneels down by Jaime’s bedside. In the dim light of the fire, all Tyrion can see of her is her silhouette: broad shoulders, bowed; big hands, and fair hair. “No. You must live and take revenge.”

“On whom? My father? My sister?”

“Well, then, you must live to spite them!” she hisses. 

Jaime laughs again, coughs. “Ah, sweetling,” he sighs, his voice faint. “Don’t grieve. It will be a good death, worthy of the White Book. They’ll sing songs of this day. Here,” he says, lifting his left hand weakly and groping for the Valyrian steel sword he had used to kill Gregor Clegane. The blade is still red with blood, gleaming in the firelight. “Take this. Name it something heroic.”

The woman draws in a choked breath. “No,” she whispers, strangely forlorn. And then: “ _No._ No death is a good death.” She bends down, as if she could seize him and drag him bodily back to life. “You can’t die. I won’t let you.”

“No?” And Jaime is laughing still, his left hand trembling as he lifts it, seeking out her wrist. For some reason, this makes her sob.

“No. Because you’re _mine_ , Jaime, and I’m yours. You’re _my_ prisoner, _my_ husband, and I don’t care how beautiful your sister is – you gave me your favour of your own free will, and you can’t take it back, I won’t let you.” She is sobbing freely now, her massive shoulders hunched. “You can’t die,” she says again. “I love you.”

**

In the morning, Jaime’s sword is gone, and the ghost-scent of lavender lingers.

**

On the third night, Jaime’s midnight visitor comes once more.

“Come away with me,” she says.

Jaime stirs, his voice slow and distant. “And do what?”

“We’ll go far, far away,” she whispers. “So far away that no one knows or cares who we are. We’ll be knights-errant, we’ll go wherever we please, and we’ll live free and happy, Jaime – far from King’s Landing and the cursed Iron Throne.” 

Jaime sighs, a long, slow exhalation of breath. “It’s a good dream,” he whispers. “Once, I might have gone with you. Before…” he trails off.

“Jaime,” she whispers. “Jaime, stay with me, please. Tell me a tale. Tell me about Ser Arthur Dayne. Tell me about Prince Rhaegar. Tell me why you killed the king.”

There’s a long, long silence, before Jaime sighs. “Have you heard of wildfire?” he asks. His voice is faint, so faint, and Tyrion can hardly hear him as, for the first time in more than fifteen years, he pours forth his fevered confession of ancient hatred and madness, terrible pride, and forgotten secrets kept close by the last of Aerys’ Seven.

“Come, sweetling,” Jaime whispers into the firelit darkness, afterwards. “Curse me or kiss me or call me a liar. _Something._ ”

“ _Jaime_ ,” she says, her voice choked. “You fool. Why didn’t you tell them?”

But he only laughs. “Why should I?” His voice is strained. “What right did they have to judge _me_?”

It is the only answer he will give her.

**

The morning after Jaime’s confession, Tyrion goes straight to Varys and charges him with searching for caches of wildfire under the city.

**

On the fourth night, Tyrion waits until she slips into the room and kneels down beside Jaime’s bed, and then he clears his throat.

“Well-met, good-sister,” he says. 

She turns, slowly, and Tyrion can see all of her in the dim light: her clear blue eyes; her ugly, mismatched features; her unshed tears.

“Lord Tyrion,” she replies. “I thought you were –”

“Asleep, yes. I’m afraid it’s rather difficult to sleep with a pair of tragic lovers just across the room.”

“We’re not –” she stops, and sighs. “If only I could –”

“Take him away, Lady Brienne,” Tyrion says gently. “Take him away from here, from our sister, from our father – yes, even from me. Our claws are sunk too deep.”

**

On the fifth day, as the sun sinks below the horizon and night closes in on them, Jaime confesses the truth about Tyrion’s long-vanished wife, Tysha.

Tyrion rages and rails at him, spitting out poisonous secrets he’s held close for too long – _Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy, for all I know –_ weeping helplessly against the ancient, futile injustice of it all – against the sheer implacability of Tywin Lannister’s hatred, as vast and immovable as the Rock.

Leaving Jaime stirring restlessly, Tyrion leaves the chamber almost as if in a dream, feeling distant and untethered from reality.

He finds his father’s bed, empty, with the sheets rumpled and smelling of a familiar perfume. In his terrible numbness, the shock of it barely registers.

He finds a crossbow.

He follows a low murmur of voices, and finds his father on the privy – and someone else.

Brienne of Tarth – Brienne _Lannister,_ now – clenches her fists and draws herself up to her full, magnificent height. “You are a murderer,” she accuses Lord Tywin Lannister, the Hand of the King. “You broke the sacred guest-right.”

“I?” his father says. “I broke nothing. It was the Freys who wielded the knife.”

“They would never have dared, had it not been for your backing!” Her eyes blaze, blue and pure as an avenging angel.

But his father only laughs. “Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner. The price was cheap by any measure.”

In the full light of the torch, Lord Tywin’s second despised daughter-in-law – another woman whose harm he had ordered from afar – a Stark loyalist who had watched her liege lady and her king murdered before her eyes, helpless to prevent it – is tall, powerful, and seemingly clothed in righteousness. Her hand clenches on the hilt of her sword – a lion-hilted sword, with rubies for eyes, and a Valyrian steel blade.

_In this light,_ Tyrion thinks, _she could almost be a knight._

“Honour cannot be bought, my lord,” she says coldly. “Blood money can never wash away your sins. And sooner or later, even you must pay the price for what you have done.”

She draws the sword with a swift, metallic ring. It catches the light and ripples, smoky black and red.

“The Starks send their regards,” the Maid of Tarth says, and then plunges her sword deep into Tywin Lannister’s belly.


	21. Far, Far Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where are we going?” he asks. “Pentos? You’ll need to go further than that to escape Cersei’s wrath.” 
> 
> “Pentos first, yes. And then far, far away,” she answers. “So far away that no one knows the name Lannister or Stark or Baratheon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Readers, thank you to all who have stuck with me on this story. It was originally only intended to be a lighthearted PWP, but then it grew feelings, and then came *PLOT*. To all those who left kudos and comments, who assured me that they were willing to follow along with a forced wedding, a *red* wedding, a separation and all that came after, I can only say: thank you. 
> 
> Please enjoy the last chapter. Hopefully it lives up to your expectations!

1.

Dark clouds cover the moon, and Brienne’s tiny boat slips its moorings and heads out to sea. As the wind fills her sails, she hears the bells of the city start to ring, a disordered, cacophonous medley of overlapping sound.

“What did you do?” Jaime asks. He’s leaning heavily against the open cabin door, unsteady on his feet, his bandaged arm held protectively close to his chest. His eyes are still bright with fever, but there’s a slow awareness in them. “Or was it Tyrion?”

“No,” she says, swallowing heavily. “I killed your father. I told him the Starks sent their regards, and sent him to join them with the Valyrian steel sword.”

He laughs, a bark of ironic delight – but then closes his eyes, slumping even more heavily. “Gods.” He draws in a long breath. “Oh gods, what will become of us now.” 

“He deserved to die,” Brienne says, curiously defensive. “He was a monster.”

“Yes.” Jaime sighs. “Yes, I suppose he was. Still, he was _our_ monster.”

He looks at the vast expanse of the sea, at the city rapidly growing further and further behind them.

“Where are we going?” he asks, his tone curiously disinterested. “Pentos? You’ll need to go further than that to escape Cersei’s wrath.”

“Pentos first, yes. And then far, far away,” she answers. “So far away that no one knows the name Lannister or Stark or Baratheon.”

**

It will take them at least four days to sail from King’s Landing to Pentos. Trapped together, with only each other for company – she doesn’t know what to think of him, this pale, subdued shadow of the magnificent lion she had once known.

They’re careful around each other, now, as they never were before.

**

The fever breaks, eventually. The brisk salt air and the sea breezes – and the medicines she had gathered from his sick bed – do much to revive him, though he is still very weak. Perhaps it’s simply that he is no longer willing himself to death. 

Twice a day, she helps him out of bed, out of the tiny cabin, and supports him as he walks slowly around the deck of the tiny boat. The sea breeze ruffles his golden curls and the sun warms his skin, and with food and exercise and sleep he regains some of his colour.

Still. Sometimes he reaches out instinctively with his missing hand, only to be brought up short by its absence.

“You should get a hook,” she says.

He blinks at her.

She nods down to his bandaged stump. “I’ve seen it on Tarth. Many sailors who lose their hands replace them with iron hooks.”

He considers this. She sees the moment his mouth starts to curl with a shadow of the old, untrustworthy amusement – the laughter she had not seen for so long, since the days before the Red Wedding.

“Cersei would have made me wear a golden hand,” he says. “No doubt it would have looked very fine, befitting a Lannister. But you, Brienne – you would simply say that a hook is more useful.” 

He throws back his head and laughs. “Perhaps men will call me Ironhook.”

She stares at him, stricken – in the long weeks of their separation, she had forgotten the gilded extravagance of his beauty.

**

2.

On the fourth day, they make harbour at Pentos.

Jaime – his golden curls disguised by a knitted sailor’s cap – stares in wide-eyed interest at the bustling docks, filled with trading ships from every corner of the world, and sailors of every colour and creed.

“Have you never been to Pentos before?” she asks, surprised. She herself had made the voyage to and from Tarth many times.

“No.” He shakes his head. “But my uncle Gerion used to tell us stories about the Free Cities. On the night before her marriage, I begged Cersei –” He cuts himself off, censoring the thought – as he often does, now. Brienne has noticed it more than once: the way he says _us_ or _we_ rather than I, when speaking of his shared childhood.

He shrugs. “Well. It’s all in the past, now. Even so, I think I’ll stay in the cabin. It’s too close to King’s Landing for my liking.”

“I won’t be long,” she says. “I need to buy more supplies.” 

_And,_ she thinks, _to call on the local factor for the Iron Bank. They’ll be only too happy to accept Tywin Lannister’s blood money._

**

The city is humming with rumour and conjecture.

 _The Demon Imp murdered his nephew the boy-king_ , some say. _Now he has killed his father, and his elder brother the Kingslayer is nowhere to be found – now there’s nothing standing in the way of his taking the Rock._

 _No, no,_ others say. _It was the Beauty, come to take vengeance for the Red Wedding and reclaim her golden husband. And he with only one hand, he could not fight her off, ha ha!_

 _Words are wind,_ she reminds herself. _Nothing more than hot air._

She conducts her business quickly and efficiently, trying not to listen to the gossip. She’s on her way back, not two hundred yards from the boat, when she stumbles across the girl.

A tall, slender maid of no more than three and ten, with hair too dark for her pale complexion; unnaturally dark, Brienne thinks absently. She’s clutching a cloak about her, her wide eyes terrified; it’s those eyes that catch Brienne’s attention: Tully blue, as blue as her brother’s; as blue as her mother’s.

“Lady Sansa,” she hisses under her breath. “What are you –”

The girl’s eyes widen with panic. “Shh!” she hisses, looking this way and that. She draws Brienne into an alley, away from the bustling crowd. “Sansa Stark is dead. My name is Alayne St – Stone.”

“I am Brienne of Tarth,” Brienne says. “I swore fealty to your mother, before –”

Before many things.

Sansa Stark regards her with wary suspicion. “You’re the Maid of Tarth,” she says. “Brienne the Beauty. You’re the one who took the Kingslayer to husband, so they could not marry him to me.”

“Yes.” There’s no point in denying it. “But – what are you doing here? Why did you flee King Joffrey’s wedding? Did you really poison him?”

“I wish I had,” Sansa says fiercely. “But it was the Tyrells, in league with Littlefinger. He wanted to take me away with him, but I didn’t like his breath or the way he looked at me, and so I ran away and ended up here. And now –” her sudden ferocity dies away, and tears well in her eyes. “Now I don’t know what to do.”

“Come with us,” Brienne offers. “We’re going far, far away, to a place where Cersei will never find us. You’ll be safe with us.”

“Us?”

Brienne hesitates, but she will have to know, sooner or later. “Ser Jaime and I.”

Sansa stares at her with frightened indecision. “Come,” Brienne coaxes her. “I swear he won’t hurt you. He’s no longer the man he once was.”

Slowly, warily, the girl follows Brienne back to the boat.

**

[“What are we supposed to do with her?” Jaime asks.

“ _Protect_ her!” Brienne insists. “She is Lady Catelyn’s daughter. We swore –”

“ _You_ swore. I owed Catelyn Stark nothing.”

“Jaime,” she says. “Please. She’s a young girl, alone in the world, frightened and beset by enemies. We must help her.”

After a long moment, he sighs. “Oh, very well. But if she tries to kill me -”]

**

“You have your mother’s eyes, Lady Sansa.” Jaime says, as he helps the girl to climb up into the boat. “My condolences for your loss.”

“My mother has no eyes,” Sansa says, her voice pale and colourless. “They slit her throat and threw her into the river.”

Jaime gives Brienne a _look_ , but smiles – his false, pleasant smile, with more than a hint of teeth.

“And in turn, Lady Brienne plunged your father’s sword through my father’s belly. Vengeance goes round and round, never-ending.”

**

When they leave Pentos, laden with supplies – the chests of Lannister gold now safely in the Iron Bank’s possession _–_ Sansa Stark comes with them. The girl is wary and fearful, watching everything with her great blue eyes, until Brienne makes her a gift of the dagger that she had once given Jaime, and that he had used to protect her – before he’d returned it during that nightmare journey from the Twins. 

“I’m sure you know already,” Brienne says, “the world is not like the songs. But this –” she presses the dagger into Sansa’s hands, “this you can rely on.”

“ _He_ told me that, once,” Sansa murmurs as she takes the dagger. Her mouth trembles. “He said I would be glad that he was a killer, one day. But I was too afraid to go with him.”

**

It’s a long journey from Pentos to their ultimate destination.

Jaime grows stronger every day, his strength and vitality returning. He starts helping her with the sails and the ropes, as well as he can; inevitably, he picks up a wooden practice sword in his left hand. It’s a disaster; his instincts are all wrong, his feet are tangled, and Brienne’s heart aches when she remembers his former grace.

He might have grown morose after that, if Brienne had not assigned him to teach Sansa how to use her dagger. In the act of teaching the girl the old, familiar movements of lunge and slash and twist, he regains something of his old confidence.

Still, it doesn’t make Sansa any less wary; she clutches the blade even when she sleeps, and wakes at the slightest disturbance.

Brienne and Jaime give her the privacy of the cabin, with its flimsy lock on the door, and bed down on the deck. There beneath the vast expanse of the stars, they sleep on their bundled up cloaks, curled back to back. She can feel every shift of Jaime’s body, the solid warmth of him pressed against her, and as the days and nights pass and they grow more comfortable in each other’s company, she feels the familiar deep, dark coil of desire stirring within her once more.

Sometimes she wakes to find Jaime turned around, curled around her in sleep, his cock pressed against her from behind; sometimes she wakes to find herself curled around him, their legs tangled together.

Sometimes she closes her eyes and casts her mind back to Applegarth, to the golden haze of light shining through the apple blossoms, and she slips her hand into her breeches and –

 _This is your cunt, Lady Brienne,_ he had said. _And this little nub is the seat of your pleasure. Have you never played with it in the dark hours of night, dreaming of bright knights and handsome princes?_

In the dark hours of the night, she closes her eyes and thinks of her husband.

**

One night he catches her at it. Perhaps it’s her low, hitching breath, or the shifting of her hips as she chases her pleasure; she feels him shift and stir behind her, feels him turn and pull her close against him, hears his low voice in her ear.

“What’s this?” he asks, low and lazy. “I thought you had known pleasure only at my hands, sweetling.” He presses his cock against her, a slow, rolling thrust of his hips – and laughs softly. “Well. Hand, now.”

He snakes his left hand down into her breeches, tugs hers away.

She makes a sound of annoyance. “I’m nearly finished!”

“Who were you thinking of? Me, I hope –”

“Renly,” she says, spitefully.

“Oh come, sweetling,” he drawls. “I’ll wager you can hardly remember his face. Now, lie back and let me pleasure you. Mind you, it’s been a while –”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Walder Frey’s,” he says promptly, slipping his long, calloused fingers into her. “Roose Bolton’s.” She draws in her breath, opens to him with a long sigh. “My father’s,” he says, as he presses the heel of his hand against her clit. “My sister’s –”

“Don’t talk about your sister while we’re –” she gasps, her hips rising to his command as he finds that perfect spot within her.

“And mine,” he breathes, as he holds her close and trails kisses down her neck, his left hand working between her legs.

She comes with a choked off gasp, a long, slow unravelling that leaves her limp and boneless.

Slowly, she turns around to face him. The moon is full, and she can see every shift of his expression – but not the look in his eyes.

“You sent me away,” she whispers. “You denied me.”

He sighs, presses his brow against hers. “I could not take you with me,” he says. “They would have eaten you alive. Do you know what my father did to my brother’s first wife?” 

She doesn’t want to know. She can imagine, perhaps. “You went back to _her_.”

“But in the end, I chose _you_.” He kisses her. “Brienne. Don’t you know you have the truest eyes in all the world? Yes, I loved her for so long. I loved her when you took me prisoner, when the Northmen pressed a spear to my throat and forced me to marry you. But – she is not what I thought she was. Perhaps I’m no longer what she thought _I_ was.” He laughs, a soft huff of air. “I can only say that by the time I was unchained and free to love her once more, I could find no joy in it – nothing but empty physical pleasure, that left me thinking of you.”

**

3.

Far, far away from King’s Landing, on a remote tropical isle, lies a tumbledown villa built long centuries ago by an exile from Old Valyria. Tangled and overgrown gardens surround high white walls, crumbling with time and covered with climbing tropical vines. The villa is built around a central atrium flooded with sunlight, the glass roof long-shattered; butterflies dance among tropical flowers and tiny jewelled birds flit here and there among the palm trees and delicate ferns. The air smells of rich growing things and cool, sweet water; the centrepiece of the atrium is an ancient fountain, a graceful stone maiden pouring an endless trickle of water from her urn.

The cracked floors are inlaid with patterns made of brightly coloured tiles and semi-precious stones, and the walls, instead of being hung with tapestries, are painted with long-faded scenes of scantily clad youths and maidens dancing in a forest, and scenes from Old Valyrian myths.

“It’s just like Applegarth,” Jaime says, looking around him at the ruined grandeur. He grins at Brienne. “Is it too much to ask for a proper house?”

But Brienne did not choose this land because of the villa. The long-overgrown gardens slope down to the sea, to a private cove deep enough to moor her boat, the sand soft and white and the waters calm and clear and almost as blue as Evenfall Bay. 

“It’s beautiful,” Sansa breathes.

“Yes,” Jaime says, looking directly at Brienne. “It is.”

**

The days are long and warm and lazy. Brienne, Jaime and Sansa spend their time swimming, or working on the villa or in the gardens, or simply relaxing in the sun. Brienne develops even more freckles. Sansa’s pale skin gains a delicate flush.

Jaime, damn him, grows perfectly tanned, his green eyes and golden hair brighter than ever.

In the mornings, as they have always done, Brienne and Jaime spar. Without his sword hand, Jaime has only a ruined shadow of his former skill and grace; still, he is determined to regain _something_ , and so he perseveres – slowly, painfully – and Brienne does what she can to help.

 _What am I now, if I can’t fight?_ He asks her late at night, in the firelit darkness of their chamber. _I’m weaker than one of Tommen’s kittens._

 _There are different kinds of strength_ , she says. _You are more than just your sword hand._

Sometimes he rages against his fate. But at least there was some sense in it; he lost his hand in defence of his brother, and if he wishes it undone he can’t regret fighting Gregor Clegane. 

There is a blacksmith on the island who crafts him an iron hook.

As the days pass, they slowly, slowly regain the ease they once shared.

One morning after a particularly good sparring session, he pushes her up against the villa wall, pressing against her and devouring her mouth. When he pulls back, they stare at each other, wide-eyed – she threads her fingers through his and together they race to their shared chamber, slamming the door behind them and only just making it to the bed.

There are still some sharp edges – she’s beginning to think there always will be – but their lives are growing entwined once more, and the memory of their separation slowly fades.

**

Long weeks and even months pass.

One day, she wakes in the dawn light to find Jaime awake and watching her. Her wrist, with its tattered and long-faded crimson ribbon is lying on the pillow between them, her palm upturned.

Slowly, thoughtfully, he strokes his fingers over the favour he had given her long months past.

“A whim,” he muses. “At the time, it was no more than that. And yet somehow it grew into _more_.”

His eyes are bright and solemn. “Sometimes I wonder if we had met in a different way – or if the Northerners had not forced it on us –” he trails off. “Perhaps in time I might have been happy to marry you.”

She clasps his hand. “You said the words,” she says. “Even with a spear pressing into your throat, you chose to say the words.”

His mouth turns up, a wry acknowledgement of her point. “What was one more vow, in the circumstances? Now, though – now I think I could say them with my whole heart.”

Her blood begins to beat in her veins. She stares at him, her mouth trembling.

“Now?” she asks.

“Now.” He puts his hand on her cheek, looks deep into her eyes, and speaks the words, as solemnly as the most sacred vow.

She cups his cheek with a shaking hand and speaks the words in turn.

Just like that, it’s done.

He leans forward and kisses her, slow, gentle kisses at first, and then hungry, voracious, devouring – she meets and matches him, equal in this as in everything else, and they come together as man and wife for the first time.

The red favour, worn and frayed and faded, finally unravels and slips from her wrist.

“No matter,” Jaime says afterwards, languid and sated. “It has served its purpose.”

Later, he scoops up both their tunics from the floor – rich Lannister crimson, and her own deep azure. “Go on,” he says, smiling. “Let’s weave a new promise. For both of us.”

Crimson- and azure-braided fabric wrapped around their wrists, they curl into each other, murmuring sleepy nothings, and with the bright light of dawn pouring over them, almost like a benediction, they drift into peaceful sleep.

**

FIN


End file.
